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fctbrarp  of  'the  theological  Seminary 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


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PRESENTED  BY 

John  Stuart  Conning,  D.D# 

PS  3523  . E96  S5  1923 
Lewisohn,  Ludwig,  1882-1955 
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AN  AMERICAN  CHRONICLE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/upstrearnamerican00lewi_0 


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AN  AMERICAN  CHRONICLE 


BY 

LUDWIG  LEWISOHN 


BONI  and  LIVERIGHT 
Publishers  :  New  York 


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AN  AMERICAN  CHRONICLE 


Copyright,  1922,  by 

Boni  &  Liveright,  Inc. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
First  Printing,  March,  1922 
Second  Printing,  May,  1922 
Third  Printing,  June,  1922 
Fourth  Printing,  June,  1922 
Fifth  Printing,  July,  1922 
Sixth  Printing,  August,  1922 
Seventh  Printing,  September,  1922 
Eighth  Printing,  November,  1922 
Ninth  Printing,  December,  1922 
Tenth  Printing,  April,  1923 
Eleventh  Printing,  May,  1923 
Twelfth  Printing,  July,  1923 
Thirteenth  Printing,  December,  1923 


THE  PLIMPTON  PRESS 
NORWOOD  *  MASS  •  U‘S*A 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEB 

PAGE 

Prologue . u. 

9 

I. 

A  Far  Childhood . 

11 

II. 

The  American  Scene  .... 

34 

III. 

The  Making  or  an  American  . 

56 

IV. 

The  Making  of  an  Anglo-American 

80 

V. 

The  American  Discovers  Exile 

104 

VI. 

The  American  Finds  Refuge  . 

127 

VII. 

The  Business  of  Education  . 

151 

VIII. 

The  Color  of  Life . 

177 

IX. 

Myth  and  Blood . 

198 

X. 

The  World  in  Chaos  .... 

220 

Epilogue  ........ 

247 

PROLOGUE 


The  world  is  full  of  stories  and  many  of  the  stories 
are  true.  But  they  are  not  true  enough.  An  artistic 
pattern  comes  between  the  teller  of  the  tale  and  his 
reality,  or  a  vague  fear  of  stupid  and  malicious  com¬ 
ment  or — especially  in  America — a  desire  to  avoid 
singularity.  Yet,  somehow,  we  must  master  life  or  it 
will  end  by  destroying  us.  We  can  master  it  only  by 
understanding  it  and  we  can  understand  it  only  by  tell¬ 
ing  each  other  the  quite  naked  and,  if  need  be,  the  de¬ 
vastating  truth. 

Some  such  perception  and  some  such  motive  is  in 
the  consciousness  of  every  serious  novelist  and  in  that 
of  every  thinker.  But  the  novelist  sacrifices  to  a  form 
and  the  thinker  to  a  system.  Each  has  had  an  anterior 
vision  into  which  he  lets  his  facts  and  even  his  emo¬ 
tions  melt.  And  this  anterior  vision — of  a  fable  in  the 
one  case,  of  a  logical  structure  in  the  other — is  nothing 
but  a  mask.  For  both  the  novelist  and  the  philosopher 
is  only  an  autobiographer  in  disguise.  Each  writes  a 
confession;  each  is  a  lyricist  at  bottom.  I,  too,  could 
easily  have  written  a  novel  or  a  treatise.  I  have  chosen 
to  drop  the  mask. 

It  is  not  a  simple  thing  to  do.  One  likes  to  be  decor¬ 
ous.  The  folds  of  this  mantle  of  civilization  we  wear 
in  public,  and  often  enough,  in  private,  are  graceful 
and  accustomed.  They  give  a  dignity  to  the  figure 
that  the  mind  may  lack.  But  if  no  one  will  ever  speak 
out  for  fear  of  wounding  his  own  susceptibilities  or 

[9] 


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those  of  others,  this  hush  of  cowardly  considerateness 
and  moral  stealth  in  which  so  much  of  our  life  is 
passed  will  either  throttle  us  some  day  or  sting  us  into 
raw  and  mad  revolt. 

In  every  other  country  men  have  spoken  out  in 
prose  or  verse  and  have  recorded  their  experience  and 
their  vision  and  their  judgment  on  this  civilization  in 
which  we  are  ensnared.  But  no  one  has  spoken  out  in 
America.  We  have  not  suffered  enough,  and  man  is  a 
timid  and  a  patient  creature  from  whom  nothing  less 
than  the  unendurable  itself  will  wring  a  protest. 
There  are  thousands  of  people  among  us  who  can  find 
in  my  adventures  a  living  symbol  of  theirs  and  in  my 
conclusion  a  liberation  of  their  own  and  in  whom,  as  in 
me,  this  moment  of  history  has  burned  away  delusions 
to  the  last  shred.  But  how  many  will  admit  that  and  not 
rather  yield  to  the  insidious  fear  of  those  to  whom  they 
owe  deference  or  money  or  a  social  position  in  Gopher 
Prairie  or  Central  City?  It  is  a  nice  question  which 
must  be  settled  in  each  conscience.  I  have  done  my 
share. 


[10] 


CHAPTER  I 


A  TAR  CHILDHOOD 

I 

The  city  that  I  remember,  the  Berlin  of  the 
eighties,  was  rugged  and  grey.  But  it  had  nothing 
forbidding  in  its  aspect,  rather  an  air  of  homely  and 
familiar  comfort.  There  were  few  private  houses,  but 
people  lived  in  their  apartments  in  large,  airy  rooms 
with  tall  French  windows  and  neat,  white  tile  ovens. 
The  streets  were  monotonous  in  appearance  but  ad¬ 
mirably  clean.  There  were  no  posters,  no  public  ad¬ 
vertisements  except  upon  the  pillars  erected  for  that 
purpose,  the  traffic  of  horse-cars,  omnibuses  and  cabs 
was  orderly  and  convenient.  The  cabs,  driven  by  red¬ 
faced,  loquacious  cabbies  in  blue-caped  coats  and  top- 
hats,  were  cheap.  My  father  and  mother,  though  far 
from  rich,  used  them  constantly,  and  I  remember  be¬ 
ing  driven  for  hours  through  the  black-draped  city  on 
that  icy  day  in  1888  on  which  the  old  emperor’s  body 
lay  in  state  in  the  cathedral. 

My  earliest  glimpses  of  beauty  are  characteristic 
of  the  city.  One  was  the  windows  of  the  Royal  Porce¬ 
lain  Works  on  the  Leipziger  Strasse.  With  all  the 
exquisite  sensitiveness  of  childhood  I  saw  those  won¬ 
derful  little  figures  and  their  porcelain  veils  and 
draperies  and  delicately  moulded  forms.  They  were 
so  tiny  and  yet  so  perfect,  and  they  thrilled  me  far 
more  than  Rauch’s  equestrian  statue  of  the  great 
Frederic  or  the  chariot  of  victory  over  the  city  gate. 

[11] 


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The  latter  were  dutifully  impressed  upon  me  by  my 
father ;  my  mother  let  me  stand  and  gaze  my  fill  before 
the  windows  of  the  porcelain  shop  .  .  .  But  the  great 
sight  to  me,  which  I  never  saw  without  a  lifting  of  the 
heart,  was  a  certain  public  square.  One  walked  or 
drove  through  a  short  street  in  which  villas  stood  in 
gardens;  at  the  end  of  that  street  one  came  upon  the 
square  quite  suddenly.  To  that  moment  I  always  looked 
forward ;  the  sensation  was  like  the  sudden  crash  of  an 
orchestra.  For  the  square  spread  out  with  an  airiness, 
a  fine  and  noble  amplitude  of  shape  and  proportion,  a 
grace  and  majesty  at  once  that  I  despair  of  rendering 
into  words.  I  have  seen  nothing  like  it  since.  Perhaps 
it  seemed  finer  to  my  childish  eyes  than  it  was  or  is; 
but  I  am  willing  to  yield  to  that  old  vision  as  a  true 
one,  since  the  seat  of  beauty  is  after  all  in  the  behold¬ 
ing  mind  .  .  . 

Beyond  the  square  lay  the  Tiergarten.  Thither  I 
was  taken  on  many  pleasant  afternoons.  And  I  can 
still  see  very  clearly  the  statue  of  Flora  surrounded  by 
gorgeous  flower-beds  and  the  monument  to  Queen 
Louise  and  the  “ snail  hill”  swarming  with  other  chil¬ 
dren  and  their  nurse-maids;  I  can  still  hear  their 
merry  cries ;  I  can  still  feel  the  stinging  coolness  on  my 
heated  throat  of  the  milk  sold  at  the  famous  kiosks  of 
Bolle.  But  when  I  was  four  or  five  years  old  I  would 
beg  my  nurse  to  take  me  to  the  gold-fish  pond.  It  was 
generally  still  by  the  little  artificial  lake  and  I  loved 
the  stillness ;  the  dark  green  foilage  was  very  thick  all 
around  and  the  dusk  fell  early  there.  The  mute  dart¬ 
ing  about  of  the  fishes  seemed  mysterious  and  soothing, 
the  stone  benches  were  cool  and  strong  and  bare.  I 
felt  in  this  spot  without  knowing  it,  the  majesty  of 

[12] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


places  withdrawn  from  the  cries  of  men  .  .  .  Another 
scene  of  the  great  park  I  remember:  a  winter  scene. 
Bare  trees  and  the  frozen  river  around  the  Rousseau 
Island  and  the  gay  scarfs  of  the  skaters.  And  sud¬ 
denly  dusk  and  a  brazen  sun-disc  black-barred  by 
trees.  Then  the  swift  early  winter  night  and  the  gas- 
lamps  of  the  streets  and  the  warmth  and  security  of 
home  .  .  . 

But  the  out-of-door  scenes  of  winter  that  I  recall 
are  few:  another  square  and  the  snow-flakes  falling 
thick  and  my  father  and  I  walking  across  it  to  a  Vienna 
cafe  where  he  played  chess  on  Sunday  mornings.  This 
is  one  scene.  And  another  is  our  sturdy  maid  carry¬ 
ing  me  from  a  playmate's  house  to  a  cab  through  a 
blinding  blizzard.  And  the  third  is  the  Christmas  fair 
— long  since  abolished — on  the  Belle-Alliance  Square. 
Twinkling  lights  in  the  frosty  air,  and  booths  noisy 
and  gay  with  cheap  toys  and  cakes,  and  everywhere 
the  sharp  odor  of  the  fir-trees. 

I  loved  spring  more  than  even  this — the  cool,  vir¬ 
ginal,  gradual  spring  of  the  North.  The  windows 
were  opened  and  children  reappeared  on  the  streets 
and  great  boughs  of  lilacs  were  sold.  Have  the  Ger¬ 
man  lilacs  a  headier  and  sweeter  fragrance  than  ours? 
It  seemed  to  fill  the  air  and  the  heart;  it  meant  the 
winds  of  spring  and  people  sitting  in  gardens  and  cast¬ 
ing  aside  their  cares.  For  the  Germans,  I  can  recog¬ 
nise  now,  yield  to  the  natural  moods  of  the  seasons. 
Spring  is  to  them  still  the  spring  of  the  folk-songs  and 
they  would  like  to  pack  a  bundle  and  wander  out  into 
the  land  with  lilac  blossoms  in  their  hats  . . .  My  father 
and  mother  took  a  cab  on  Sunday  and  drove  in  the 
Tiergarten  or  else  went  by  boat  up  the  river  Spree  to 

[13] 


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Treptow  and  there  we  sat  on  pleasant  terraces  and 
watched  the  life  on  the  water.  Even  then  I  loved  to 
see  men  and  youths  in  their  skiffs  with  bare  white  arms 
and  legs  and  paddles  flashing  in  the  sunlight  and  took 
a  deep  delight  in  the  strong,  silent,  virile  rhythm  of  the 
rise  and  fall  of  their  oars.  And  my  father  gave  me  a 
cylindrical  box  of  tin  and  taught  me  to  recognize  and 
gather  a  few  of  the  commoner  herbs  and  grasses.  Or 
tried,  rather,  for  even  at  five  my  mind  was  impervious 
to  the  facts  of  science  and  soon  I  carried  sandwiches 
in  my  6 ‘  botanising  drum. ’  ’ 

In  the  summer  of  my  sixth  year  my  father  rented  a 
house  by  a  lake  in  Straus sberg  near  Berlin.  The  vil¬ 
lage  was  still  isolated.  You  took  the  train  and  then  a 
stage-coach  to  reach  it.  There  were  swans  on  the  lake 
and  a  boat,  sheep  in  the  meadows  and  goose-berry 
bushes  in  the  garden.  Over  all  a  deep,  brooding,  old- 
world  peace.  My  father  employed  weavers  in  the  vil¬ 
lage  and  I  saw  them  in  their  houses  at  the  hand- 
looms.  It  was  a  city-child’s  first  taste  of  country  life. 
And  the  crow  of  a  cock  across  the  fields  or  the  bleat  of 
a  sheep  still  brings  to  me  a  vision  of  the  Brandenburg 
country-side.  When  we  returned  to  Berlin  I  entered 
school  and  life  became  a  grave  and  ordered  matter. 

n 

Our  home  was  a  flat  of  seven  rooms  furnished  with 
more  solidity  than  grace.  Beds,  tables  and  chairs 
were  of  massive  walnut  and  of  a  design  so  old-fash¬ 
ioned  that  I  see  it  returning  into  favor.  All  these 
things  had  not  been  bought  in  shops.  According  to  a 
sound,  old  custom  even  then,  I  suppose,  on  the  wane, 
they  had  been  made  to  order  by  a  small  master  cabinet- 

1 14] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


maker.  Here  lived  my  father,  my  mother,  my  maternal 
grandmother  and  I.  Nor  must  I  forget  the  faithful, 
kindly  Kathe  who  was  with  us  and  served  us  until  that 
home  was  broken  up.  There  entered  into  my  percep¬ 
tions,  also,  a  janitor,  his  lank  wife,  their  pale,  blond 
children.  But  these  remained  remote  and  dim. 

My  people  were  Jews  of  unmixed  blood  and  descent 
who  had  evidently  lived  for  generations  in  the  North 
and  North  East  of  Germany.  I  have  before  me  now  a 
picture  of  my  grandfather  taken  in  the  sixties.  Despite 
the  fact  that  he  performed  rabbinical  functions  to  scat¬ 
tered  congregations  in  East  Prussia,  I  observe  that  in 
contravention  of  the  law,  his  face  is  clean-shaven  and 
that  he  has  no  ear-locks;  he  is  clad  in  the  Western 
European  fashion  of  his  day.  He  was  a  large  man  with 
a  liberal  forehead,  a  humorous  mouth  and  kindly  eyes. 
From  old,  half-forgotten  anecdotes  I  glean  something 
of  this  character.  He  had  much  rabinnical  learning, 
but  a  whimsical  contempt  for  the  ritual  law;  his 
familiar  friends  were  the  Protestant  Pastor  and  the 
schoolmaster  of  the  village ;  he  was  of  frugal  habits  but 
of  something  dangerously  like  incompetence  in  worldly 
things.  The  power  and  intensity  of  the  family  belonged 
to  my  grandmother,  who  was  much  his  junior  and  who 
survived  him  for  over  twenty  years.  It  was  she  who 
had  run  the  primitive  little  factory  that  turned  cotton 
into  wadding  for  the  greatcoats  needed  in  the  severe 
winters  on  the  Russian  frontier;  it  was  she  who  had 
toiled  early  and  late  that  her  sons  might  have  an 
academic  education.  They  were  grateful  to  her  and 
provided  for  her  in  her  old  age  with  a  fine  generosity. 
Of  intimate  tenderness  to  her  they  felt  but  little.  She 
was  a  tall  woman  and  a  dour.  She  had  strong  prac- 

[15] 


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tical  sense  but  a  tyrannical  and  gloomy  temper.  To 
me  she  melted,  the  only  child  of  her  youngest  and 
of  her  only  girl,  and  the  memory  touches  me  of  her  sit¬ 
ting  on  the  green  rep  sofa,  glasses  on  nose,  and  read¬ 
ing  aloud  to  me  the  German  fairy  tales  of  which  I 
never  tired. 

My  father  and  mother  were  first  cousins.  Their 
racial  and  social  origin  was  the  same.  So  that  I  need 
not  dwell  on  my  paternal  grand-parents  of  whom  I 
know  but  little.  The  mother  (my  grandmother’s  sis¬ 
ter)  had  died  early.  My  grandfather  had  started  out 
in  life  as  a  tanner,  but  had  succeeded  neither  at  his 
trade  nor  at  anything  else.  I  remember  him  well,  for 
he  was  our  guest  on  every  Sunday.  His  white  mous¬ 
tache  and  Vandyke  beard  gave  him  an  air  of  false  dis¬ 
tinction,  for  his  intelligence  was  limited  and  his  man¬ 
ners  clumsy.  My  mother  treated  him  with  gentleness, 
my  father  with  a  distant  kindness.  For  my  grand¬ 
father,  being  poor,  had  turned  over  his  oldest  child  at 
the  age  of  five  to  childless  but  wealthy  relatives  and 
this  uncle  and  aunt  had  been,  in  the  deeper  sense,  the 
only  parents  whom  my  father  had  ever  known.  From 
them,  too,  came  the  moderate  but  real  prosperity  that 
we  enjoyed. 

Other  forms  and  faces  are  much  clearer  in  my 
memory — a  large  circle  of  uncles  and  aunts  and  cousins, 
all  acting  with  a  special  tenderness  to  me  as  the  young¬ 
est  child  in  the  group.  And  chiefly  I  recall  my  mother’s 
oldest  and  favorite  brother.  He  was  a  man  in  the 
forties  when  I  knew  him,  very  tall  and  very  stout.  He 
was  his  mother’s  son.  But  her  imperiousness  and 
moroseness  had  been  tempered  in  him  by  a  fine  and 
trained  intelligence  and  by  contact  with  men  and  with 

[16] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


notable  affairs.  He  had  passed  through  the  gymnasium 
at  Insterburg  and  then  studied  law  at  Konigsberg. 
Thrice  he  had  fought  for  his  country,  in  1864,  1866  and 
1870,  and  from  the  campaign  in  France  he  had  re¬ 
turned  with  the  iron  cross.  He  had  abandoned  the  law 
and  occupied  a  distinguished  position  on  the  staff  of  a 
well-known  Berlin  newspaper.  Punctilious  and  exact¬ 
ing  and  a  tireless  worker,  he  showed  the  kindlier  ele¬ 
ments  of  his  nature  in  a  wide  hospitality  and  for  many 
years  his  house  in  Berlin  was  the  gathering  place  of 
the  younger  graduates  of  his  Burschenschaft  and  his 
university.  The  letters  which  he  wrote  to  my  mother 
in  America  in  the  course  of  two  decades  I  am  glad  to 
possess.  The  style  is  clear  and  expressive  with  a  touch 
of  austerity,  the  contents  unaffectedly  high-minded, 
melancholy  (the  badge  of  all  our  tribe)  and  warm¬ 
hearted. 

This  uncle  had  married  a  Gentile  woman  and  for 
years  the  marriage  was  a  stormy  one.  But  his  daugh¬ 
ter,  a  fair,  engaging  girl  somewhat  older  than  I,  was 
the  companion  and  playmate  of  my  earliest  years,  and 
the  relations  between  my  aunt  and  her  Jewish  kin  were 
cordial  and  unclouded. 

In  truth,  all  the  members  of  my  family  seemed  to 
feel  that  they  were  Germans  first  and  Jews  afterwards. 
They  were  not  disloyal  to  their  race  nor  did  they  seek 
to  hide  it.  Although  they  all  spoke  unexceptional 
High  German  they  used  many  Hebrew  expressions 
both  among  themselves  and  before  their  Gentile 
friends.  But  they  had  assimilated,  in  a  deep  sense, 
Aryan  ways  of  thought  and  feeling.  Their  books,  their 
music,  their  political  interests  were  all  German.  I 
remember  but  one  phrase  disparaging  to  their  Christ- 

[17] 


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ian  countrymen.  It  was  a  curious  one : ‘  ‘  What  can  one 
expect?  The  Gentile  has  no  heart ! ’ ’ 

Two  scenes  stand  before  me  which  symbolise  the 
character  of  the  social  group  from  which  I  sprang. 
This  is  one :  I  am  sitting  in  a  half-darkened  room  and 
my  heart  beats  and  my  cheeks  burn.  It  is  Christmas 
Eve.  I  look  out  through  the  dark  pane  and  across  the 
street.  Ah,  there,  behind  an  uncurtained  window,  a 
tree  with  candles.  Quickly  I  turn  my  eyes  away.  I 
do  not  want  to  taste  the  glory  until  it  is  truly  mine. 
And  at  last,  at  last,  a  bell  rings.  The  folding  doors 
open  and  there— in  the  drawing  room — stands  my  own 
tree  in  its  glimmering  splendor  and  around  it  the  gifts 
from  my  parents  and  my  grandmother  and  my  uncles 
and  aunts — charming  German  toys  and  books  of  fairy¬ 
tales  and  marchpane  from  Konigsberg.  And  my  mother 
takes  me  by  the  hand  and  leads  me  to  the  table  and  I 
feel  as  though  I  were  myself  walking  straight  into  a 
fairytale  . .  . 

And  the  other  scene :  It  was  my  grandmother ’s  cus¬ 
tom,  in  pious  remembrance  of  her  husband,  to  visit  the 
temple  on  the  chief  Jewish  holidays — New  Year  and 
the  Day  of  Atonement.  And  once,  on  the  day  of  the 
great  white  fast,  I  was  taken  there  to  see  her.  The 
temple  was  large  and  rather  splendid ;  the  great  seven- 
branched  candelabra  were  of  shining  silver.  The  rabbi, 
the  cantor  and  the  large  congregation  of  men  were  all 
clad  in  their  gleaming  shrouds  and  their  white,  silken 
praying  shawls  and  had  white  caps  on  their  heads.  I 
can  still  see  one  venerable  old  man  who  read  his  He¬ 
brew  book  through  a  large  magnifying  glass.  The 
whiteness  of  the  penitential  scene  was  wonderful  and 
solemn.  Then  the  first  star  came  out  and  the  great  day 

[18] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


was  over  and  in  the  vestibule  I  saw  my  grandmother 
being  reverently  saluted  by  her  sons  who  wished  her 
a  happy  holiday. 

Two  scenes.  But  the  first  was  native  and  familiar 
to  the  heart  of  the  child  that  I  was :  the  second  a  little 
weird  and  terrifying  and  alien. 

m 

My  father’s  foster-father  was  a  man  of  some  educa¬ 
tion  and  reading.  Also  an  astute  man  who  despite  his 
severe  lameness  conducted  a  successful  importing 
business  from  his  armchair.  His  wife  was  a  warm¬ 
hearted  woman,  but  incurably  erratic  and  had  ended 
in  hopeless  madness  when  my  father  was  a  youth.  It 
is  clear  that  the  adopted  child  received  great  kindness, 
was  treated  with  indulgence  or  overindulgence,  but 
never  received  any  rational  guidance.  He  was  taken  to 
France  and  Switzerland  before  he  was  fifteen,  his 
ample  allowance  permitted  him  to  satisfy  his  tastes  in 
books  and  music  and  amateur  scientific  experimenta¬ 
tion.  But  neither  his  mind  nor  his  character  under¬ 
went  any  discipline.  Thus  he  grew  up  generous  but 
wasteful.  The  bitter  experience  of  later  years  cor¬ 
rected  that  fault.  It  could  not  correct  his  over¬ 
eagerness,  his  lack  of  intellectual  restraint,  his  habit 
of  Utopian  scheming,  or  the  harsh  self-assertiveness 
by  which  he  strove  to  deaden  his  own  sense  of  failure 
and  insignificance.  But  neither  could  it  impair  his 
beautiful  unselfishness  and  courage  or  his  tireless  de-* 
votion  to  the  things  of  the  mind.  In  later  years  I 
often  found  myself  at  variance  with  him  in  matters  of 
opinion  and  belief;  yet  in  face  of  his  unfaltering  de- 

[19] 


UP  STREAM 


votion  I  was  always  consoled  by  the  thought  that  1 
have  scarcely  a  sound  interest  in  literature  or  philoso¬ 
phy  the  impulse  toward  which  had  not  come  to  me 
from  his  teaching  and  from  his  example  .  .  . 

He  completed  the  course  of  the  Royal  Realschule 
at  nineteen.  He  was  too  uncertain  of  himself  to  in¬ 
sist  on  prolonging  his  studies  at  the  university;  he 
already  loved  my  mother  and  so  he  entered  a  well- 
known  house  of  woolen  manufacturers.  By  this  time 
his  foster-mother  was  hopelessly  insane  and  his  fos¬ 
ter-father  had  fallen  under  the  influence  of  an  inferior 
woman.  He  had  no  real  home.  And  so  his  request  to 
be  set  up  in  business  and  to  marry  was  readily  granted. 
At  twenty-three  he  was  a  father. 

I  often  reflect  upon  his  tragic  youth.  He  was  only 
a  boy,  crude,  passionate,  impulsive.  He  disliked  his 
business  but  dared  not  slight  it.  Upon  him  were  the 
eyes  of  my  grandmother  and  of  my  mother’s  brothers. 
Their  scrutiny,  I  am  afraid,  was  more  severe  than 
sympathetic.  The  society  in  which  he  lived  placed 
great  stress  on  dignity  and  seemliness  of  demeanor. 
And  so  he  tried  hard  to  play  the  man  and  the  man  of 
business.  That,  under  these  circumstances,  he  escaped 
obvious  disaster  for  eight  years  bears  witness  to  his 
feeling  of  duty  and  his  endurance. 

My  earliest  recollections  of  him  are  all  of  his  hours 
of  escape  from  drudgery  and  care.  He  would  sit  in  the 
mellow  gas-light  of  our  sitting-room  and  read  far  into 
the  night.  Or  I  would  wake  up  and  see  him  in  the  ad¬ 
joining  room,  reading  in  bed  by  candle-light.  And  on 
cold  or  rainy  Sundays  and  holidays  he  would  spend 
hours  and  hours  at  the  piano.  He  played  most  imper¬ 
fectly  at  best,  but  he  read  his  scores  accurately  and 

[20] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


with  fine  musical  intelligence  and  his  halting  technique 
did  not  prevent  him  from  hearing  all  the  grace  and 
charm  of  Mozart,  all  the  loftiness  and  solemn  sweet¬ 
ness  of  Beethoven  .  .  . 

My  mother  did  not  come  to  Berlin  until  her  father 
died.  She  was  then  only  twelve  years  old.  But  a 
deep  and  tenacious  loyalty  attached  her  to  the  bleak 
East  Prussian  village  of  her  childhood,  and  for  years 
she  was  never  weary  of  telling,  nor  I  of  hearing,  stories 
of  those  early  days.  Thus  I  know  how  the  intense, 
dark-eyed  little  girl  with  the  very  red  cheeks  of  a 
northern  climate  hastened,  wrapped  in  a  heavy  shawl, 
through  the  snowy  dusk  to  afternoon  school,  clutching 
a  candle  with  which  to  light  her  form.  Or  how,  on 
other  days,  she  went  eagerly  to  the  house  of  a  super¬ 
annuated  spinster  who  had  been  a  governess  in  gen¬ 
tlemen’s  families  to  learn  French  and  crocheting  and 
tatting.  She  brought  from  that  old  home,  moreover, 
a  fine  heritage  of  folk-songs  and  tales  and  sayings. 
Much  that  I  learned  from  her  lips  as  early  as  I  learned 
anything  I  have  found  since  in  the  collections  of  folk¬ 
lorists  and  students  of  popular  poetry  and  song.  She 
was  all  her  life,  despite  her  Jewishness,  her  wide  and 
sad  experience  and  her  artistic  tastes,  a  spiritual  child 
of  the  German  folk.  A  hundred  times,  when  her  hair 
was  white  and  her  heart  worn  with  sorrow  and  disap¬ 
pointment,  I  have  seen  in  her  eyes,  in  her  whole  self 
arise  suddenly  a  ghostly  but  sweet  shadow  of  the 
sturdy  East-Prussian  lass — simple  and  deep-hearted 
and  of  the  very  soul  of  her  homeland. 

Her  education  in  Berlin  was  old-fashioned  and  lim¬ 
ited.  It  was  long  before  the  days  of  the  gymnasium 
for  girls.  Yet  within  its  narrow  range  the  Hohere 

[21] 


UP  STREAM 


Tochterschule  had  thoroughness.  My  mother’s  knowl¬ 
edge  of  French,  at  least,  was  sound  and  extensive. 
Her  chief  interest,  however,  in  those  days,  was  music. 
Her  alto  voice  was  well  cultivated.  When  I  awoke 
to  the  consciousness  of  art  I  found  that  I  knew — and 
could  remember  no  time  at  which  I  had  not  known — 
the  words  and  music  of  practically  all  the  great  songs 
of  Schubert  and  Schumann,  of  Franz  and  Mendelssohn 
and  Brahms.  So  often,  during  my  childhood,  had  I 
heard  them  from  her  lips. 

Her  girlhood  was  not  happy.  The  social  environ¬ 
ment  was  cruelly  rigid ;  one  breathed  according  to  law. 
She  wanted  to  enter  a  seminary  for  teachers;  she 
begged  to  be  allowed  to  learn  book-keeping.  But  since 
there  was  no  need,  her  brothers  decided  that  it  was 
unseemly  for  a  young  woman  to  work  outside  of  the 
home.  When  the  dusk  stole  into  the  small  Berlin  flat 
and  she  was  weary  of  music  and  embroidery,  she  would 
go  out  in  all  weathers  and  hurry  through  the  streets 
and  let  the  rain  beat  upon  her  face — intensely  troubled, 
rebellious  against  the  forces  that  held  her.  Yet  she 
was  quite  helpless.  For  her  strength  never  lay  in 
nimbleness  of  mind;  neither  then  nor  later  did  she  re¬ 
flect  closely;  it  lay  in  the  fullness  and  richness  of  her 
emotional  nature.  But  she  had  been  carefully  taught 
to  distrust  her  impulses.  She  wrote  verses  and  dared 
not  show  them.  Even  so  she  was  considered  uncon¬ 
ventional  and  shrank  more  and  more  within  herself. 
She  entertained  a  deep  affection  for  a  young  pianist 
through  whom  she  caught  glimpses  of  a  freer  life.  But 
he  was  hopelessly  poor  and  drifted  away.  She  re¬ 
ceived  the  most  intelligent  sympathy,  after  all,  from 
her  young  cousin,  my  father.  They  read  the  same 

[22] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


books,  loved  the  same  music,  nursed  their  enthusiasm 
on  the  same  plays.  He  was  reputed,  moreover,  to  be 
the  heir  of  a  very  large  fortune.  Neither  knew  that 
his  foster-father,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  had  lost  many 
thousands  in  the  financial  collapse  that  followed  the 
inflation  of  the  early  seventies.  And  she  thought, 
quite  rightly,  that  money  means  liberty  in  the  higher 
and  finer  as  well  as  in  the  coarser  and  more  obvious 
sense. 

Once  married,  however,  my  father’s  crudeness  and 
violence  wore  on  her;  a  moroseness  in  him  which  was 
the  result  of  the  harsh  pressure  which  he  endured  and 
would  not  admit,  estranged  her.  Again  she  was  baffled 
and  solitary.  Then  her  child  was  born.  The  tension 
snapped.  Into  the  channel  of  her  maternal  love  she 
poured  all  her  passionate  ideality,  all  her  deep  yearn¬ 
ing,  all  her  half-inarticulate  ambitions,  all  the  splen¬ 
dor  of  her  frustrate  hopes.  In  the  wild  and  tragic 
munificence  of  her  love  she  kept  nothing  for  herself. 
Utterly  she  transferred  the  centre  of  her  being  to 
another.  It  was  wrong !  Wrong  to  herself.  The  world 
is  wide  and  its  paths  are  many  and  the  fate  of  no  man 
is  quite  his  own  to  shape.  So  that  through  my  fail¬ 
ures  and  misfortunes  and  enforced  wanderings  her 
life  was  again  beggared  and  often  darkened.  I  loved 
her  and  I  mourn  her  with  all  my  strength.  Yet  to  her 
great  love  I  was — as  any  man  would  have  been — but 
an  unprofitable  servant. 

iv 

My  life  until  I  went  to  school  was  an  intense  wak¬ 
ing  dream.  The  pretty  toys  I  had  interested  me  but 

[23] 


UP  STREAM 


little.  I  shrank  from  playmates  not  through  timidity 
but  because  they  interrupted  my  imaginings.  Their 
amusements  seemed  aimless  and  their  noise  made  me 
feel  sick  and  faint.  Yet  I  was  by  no  means  a  delicate 
child;  I  was  sturdy  and  broad-chested  and  passed 
vigorously  through  two  rather  severe  illnesses  that 
attacked  me  early.  But  just  as  the  taste  of  certain 
dainties  that  I  liked  gave  me  a  pleasure  that  was  almost 
too  keen,  so  disagreeable  sense-impressions  made  me 
dizzy  and,  on  at  least  one  occasion,  violently  ill.  An 
old  aunt  had  died  and  my  mother  took  me  with  her  on 
a  visit  of  condolence.  The  room  was  full  of  black- 
garbed  women ;  there  was  a  faint  stale  odor  of  flowers 
and  a  continuous  buzz  of  conversation.  It  all  seemed 
hideous  to  me;  I  fainted  and  had  to  be  carried  home. 
The  only  child  whom  I  admitted  to  full  intimacy  was 
my  fair-haired  cousin.  She  was  musical,  her  voice 
was  soft,  her  ways  with  me  were  gentle.  I  loved  to 
touch  the  fine  texture  of  her  skin  and  the  silkiness  of 
her  long  hair.  Curiously  enough  I  cannot  remember 
how,  in  those  earliest  years,  we  entertained  each 
other.  I  recall  with  the  utmost  vividness  that  I 
thought  her  lovely,  and  that  the  sight  of  her  touched 
me  like  the  lilacs  of  spring  or  the  sound  of  singing  .  .  . 

Most  of  my  waking  dreams  have  vanished  from  my 
mind.  But  two  I  entertained  so  constantly  and  so  long 
that  I  remember  them  as  though  they  had  been  reali¬ 
ties.  I  imagined  a  great  garden  in  an  endless  summer. 
In  it  were  gathered  under  cool  groves  the  few  people 
whom  I  loved.  There  were  tables  under  the  trees 
laden  with  things  to  eat — roast  duck  and  Baumkuchen 
and  clusters  of  large,  cool,  translucent  grapes.  A 
Never-Never  land.  The  other  dream  was  more  boyish. 

[24] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 

I  saw  myself,  clad  in  green  huntman’s  garb,  a  cock’s 
feather  in  my  hat,  riding  swiftly  on  a  small,  lithe 
horse.  Whither  or  why?  I  don’t  know.  That  vision 
of  myself  was  enough  and  was  a  source  of  endless 
delight. 

When  I  was  four  years  old  I  was  sent  to  a  Kinder¬ 
garten.  But  I  was  so  obviously  unhappy  and  listless 
that  the  principal  asked  my  mother  to  keep  me  at 
home.  Then  my  grandmother  taught  me  my  letters 
and  my  real  life  began.  My  first  two  books  were  col¬ 
lections  of  stories  written  for  little  children  and  I 
thought  them  delightful.  But  someone  brought  me  a 
small,  greenish  volume  bound  in  boards.  It  was  called 
Bechstein’s  March en.  Faded  and  tattered  the  little 
book  lies  before  me  as  I  write.  I  turn  the  pages — to 
this  day  I  know  them  almost  by  heart — I  look  at  the 
small,  stiff,  quaint,  inimitably  haunting  wood-cuts.  .  .  . 
Immemorial  romance,  sombre  and  magical  world  of 
dim  forests  and  mediaeval  cities  and  doomed  kings, 
of  shepherds  and  gnomes,  full  of  old  racial  memories, 
free  as  the  imagination  of  childhood,  deep  as  the  heart 
of  man !  The  style,  I  see  now,  was  worthy  of  the  mat¬ 
ter — concrete,  marrowy,  quaint  as  the  wood-cuts  with 
flashes  now  and  then,  of  a  wild,  grotesque  humor  .  .  . 
For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  became  insistent,  begging 
for  books  and  more  books.  Thus  I  read  Grimm  and 
Andersen  for  myself  now  and  the  Arabian  Nights  and 
a  large  and  precious  volume  called  Al-Runa  in  which 
were  gathered  fairy-tales  of  all  peoples — German  and 
English  and  Norse,  Romaic  and  Russian  and  the  weird 
and  cruel  legends  of  the  Southern  Slavs.  I  read  until 
my  eyes  ached  and  my  forehead  was  fevered.  If  my 
mother  bade  me  go  and  play  in  the  open  I  lay  on  the 

[25] 


UP  STREAM 


door-step  without  and  wept  in  a  passion  of  despair. 
No  wonder!  I  have  lived  with  books  and  loved  the 
best  things  in  more  than  one  literature.  Yet  what  has 
the  highest  delight  of  later  years  been  to  that  pure  and 
passionate  joy,  that  ecstasy  of  absorption  in  which  I 
became  one  with  the  things  I  read  and  saw  with  my 
own  eyes  castles  by  the  shores  of  Norseland,  dragons 
on  the  banks  of  lustrous  rivers  and  with  my  own  ears 
heard  the  blowing  of  the  horns  of  Elfland.  .  .  . 

My  condition  was,  of  course,  an  unhealthy  one,  and 
my  mother  dealt  with  it  energetically.  On  four  after¬ 
noons  a  week  I  was  sent  to  the  Tiergarten  in  charge 
of  a  young  Kindergartnerin,  on  other  afternoons  my 
mother  took  long  walks  with  me,  a  habit  which  we  con¬ 
tinued  for  many  years.  I  said  that  she  dealt  with  this 
matter  energetically.  But  not  with  this  alone.  Her 
love  was  no  ignoble  indulgence.  It  held  no  element  of 
moral  sloth.  My  diet  was  determined  by  the  family 
physician,  not  by  my  liking.  For  every  time  I  tasted 
sweets  or  pastry,  an  American  child  of  to-day  tastes 
them  a  hundred  times.  I  slept  on  a  pillow  of  horse¬ 
hair;  I  used  not  the  traditional  feather-bed  but  the 
hardier  blanket.  ...  It  never  occurred  to  me  that  I 
could  fail  to  obey  my  father  and  mother;  it  never  oc¬ 
curred  to  my  cousin  and  the  other  children  whom  we 
knew  that  they  could  fail  to  obey  theirs.  Thus  be¬ 
tween  parents  and  young  children  the  relations  were 
far  more  dignified  and  becoming,  far  more  fruitful  of 
a  fine  piety  than  any  I  have  seen  since.  There  may 
have  been  an  occasional  injustice.  We  are  all  human. 
There  was  no  noise,  no  wrangling,  no  vulgar  antagon¬ 
ism.  .  .  .  After  the  care  of  my  body,  my  mother’s  love 
took  the  form  of  an  intense  and  glowing  ambition  for 

[26] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


me.  I  was  to  realize  my  highest  possibilities,  to  de¬ 
velop  every  faculty,  to  attain  every  ability  and  grace 
that  mark  the  complete  man.  I  learned  skating  in 
winter  and  swimming  in  summer,  always  under  com¬ 
petent  instruction.  I  was  taught  music  and  gymnas¬ 
tics.  I  have  heard  mothers  conrolain  with  a  cer¬ 
tain  wistfulness  that  it  was  time  for  their  children  to 
go  to  school.  I  have  seen  them  put  off  the  evil  day. 
My  mother  with  her  German  ideals  felt  altogether  dif¬ 
ferently.  With  almost  an  austerity  of  joy  she  wel¬ 
comed  the  autumn  of  my  sixth  year.  The  great  process 
of  development  was  now  to  begin  in  earnest.  The  day 
was  a  solemn  day  for  her.  Consciously  she  now  dedi¬ 
cated  herself  to  a  double  watchfulness,  helpfulness  and 
devotion  during  the  momentous  years  that  w^ere  to 
come. 

v 

The  society  into  which  I  was  born,  whatever  were 
its  virtues  or  its  faults,  had  one  notable  quality:  it 
knew  what  it  wanted.  A  few  aims  and  their  implied 
values  were  fixed.  The  kind  of  school  I  was  to  attend 
was  never  debated.  It  was  an  absolutely  foregone  con¬ 
clusion  that  a  liberal  education  was  the  necessary  foun¬ 
dation  of  right  and  noble  living.  My  parents  were 
of  modest  origin  and  of  modest  means.  But  if  anyone 
had  questioned  my  being  prepared  for  the  gymnasium 
and  proceeding  from  thence  to  the  university,  they 
would  have  held  it  a  prophecy  of  my  early  death.  My 
uncles  entertained  the  same  feeling  concerning  their 
sons,  and  among  the  painful  memories  of  my  childhood 
is  the  gray,  tragic  face  of  one  of  them  whose  boy  had 
that  day  failed  to  pass  his  Beifeprufung.  So  deeply 

[27] 


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did  this  conviction,  which  was  considered  beyond  dis¬ 
cussion,  sink  into  my  consciousness  that,  to  this  day, 
the  debate  concerning  the  value  of  a  higher  education 
so  often  heard  among  us  in  America,  has  no  more 
real  content  for  me  than  a  debate  concerning  the  value 
of  bread.  .  .  . 

The  gymnasium  which  admitted  me  to  its  Yorschule 
was  housed  in  an  ancient  building,  four  stories  high, 
constructed  of  heavy  and  rather  gloomy  stones.  I  do 
not  know  where  it  was.  I  know  that  on  my  way  to 
school  I  passed  one  house  that  was  almost  hidden  by 
roses  in  the  spring,  and  that  I  passed  a  handsome  new 
church  that  stood  ,in  a  small,  green  square.,  The 
wooden  stairs  of  the  gaunt,  old  schoolhouse  were 
deeply  worn  by  the  steps  of  generations  of  boys  and 
youths,  the  yard  was  bleak  and  paven,  the  rooms  light 
but  barren  of  any  adornment;  the  forms  were  dark- 
brown  with  splashes  of  ink. 

During  the  first  week  at  school  I  learned  to  know 
loneliness  and  homesickness  and  began  to  develop, 
too,  a  certain  quiet  stoicism  which  staid  with  me  for 
many  ypars  and  did  me  measureless  harm.  The 
teacher,  a  lank,  kindly  man  with  a  long,  blond  beard, 
left  the  room  for  a  little.  He  found  it  in  uproar  when 
he  returned.  I  had  been  quiet.  But  I,  too,  felt  the 
smarting  taps  of  his  cane  across  my  shoulders.  I  did 
not  cry  and  I  did  not  tell  my  mother  until  years  later. 
It  was  the  only  punishment  I  received  at  the  school 
during  the  two  years  of  my  attendance.  Soon  this 
very  teacher  singled  me  out  with  much  kindness,  vis¬ 
ited  our  home  when  I  was  ill  with  a  heavy  cold  and 
commended  me  to  the  teacher  who  followed  him.  By 
this  time  too,  I  had  made  friends  of  several  of  my  little 

[28] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


fellow-pupils  and  the  first  wretched  feeling  of  forlor- 
ness  had  worn  off. 

The  instruction  was  simple  in  its  subject-matter: 
reading,  writing,  arithmetic,  singing,  gymnastics  and 
<  ‘  religion. ’  ’  I  know  now  that  it  was  remarkably  thor¬ 
ough.  I  am  hopelessly  stupid  at  figures.  For  six 
weary  years  at  high  school  and  college  I  dragged  my 
numb  mind  through  five  or,  at  the  best,  three  periods 
of  mathematical  instruction  a  week.  I  could  not  tell 
now,  literally  to  save  my  life,  the  nature  of  a  quad¬ 
ratic  equation.  But  I  know  the  elementary  arithmetic 
learned  in  that  German  school.  I  don’t  need  to  multi¬ 
ply  simple  figures,  for  instance.  I  know  the  answers 
instinctively  and  at  once.  .  .  .  The  hour  I  liked  best 
was  that  known  as  “religion”  As  a  Jew  I  could  easily 
have  been  excused  from  attending.  But  my  parents 
had  no  prejudices  in  this  respect.  And  they  were  right. 
For  there  was  no  hint  of  dogma,  not  even  of  moraliz¬ 
ing.  The  teacher  simply  related  to  us  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  legends  in  chronological  order,  and  to  me  it 
seemed  as  though  I  heard  a  new  and  fascinating  set  of 
fairy-tales.  I  had  a  vision  of  the  tower  of  Babel  pierc¬ 
ing  a  tropic  sky,  of  long  lines  of  camels  under  solemn 
stars,  of  tall,  dark  maidens  carrying  pitchers  to  ancient 
wells  by  the  tents  of  Jacob.  ... 

The  home-work  was  harder.  My  mother’s  intensei 
ambition  for  me  made  her  severe.  She  bought  a  desk 
for  me  which  stood,  as  did  its  chair,  on  a  little  wooden 
platform  several  feet  in  height.  While  I  sat  at  this  desk 
she  could,  small  as  I  was,  stand  beside  me.  And  so  we 
worked  together  until  my  tasks  were  perfectly  done — 
until  I  had  written  my  copy-book  page  and  could  recite 
my  verses  without  hesitation.  These  tasks,  I  think, 

[29] 


UP  STREAM 


grew  longer  than  was  quite  -vise  during  my  second 
year  at  school.  I  shed  some  childish  tears  of  weari¬ 
ness,  I  know,  and  my  mother  grew  a  little  anxious 
over  my  lack  of  zeal. 

But  life  was  not  all  work.  There  was  the  magic 
of  Christmas  and  Easter  with  generous  vacations; 
there  was  the  delight  of  spring  with  flower-girls  on  the 
curb.  I  had  an  allowance  of  one  mark  a  week  now  and 
spent  most  of  it  on  posies  for  my  mother  and  my 
blond  cousin.  Above  all,  in  winter  there  was  an  occa¬ 
sional  visit  to  a  theatrical  performance  of  some  fairy 
play — a  pleasure  almost  too  rich  and  keen  to  be  quite 
free  from  pain.  Also  there  were  children’s  parties. 
But  I  cared  less  for  these  than  for  a  quiet  afternoon 
with  one  of  my  fellows  at  school — a  little  lad  of  almost 
girlish  delicacy  and  of  my  own  tastes.  And  there 
were  long  walks  with  my  mother,  and  skating  in  win¬ 
ter  with  my  cousin  and  summer  outings.  ...  A  rich 
and  happy  childhood.  Even  my  grandmother’s  death 
darkened  it  only  for  a  week  or  two.  Nor,  in  my  child¬ 
ish  preoccupations,  did  I  hear  the  mutterings  that  pre- 
ceeded  the  final  crash  of  our  prosperity  and  our  hopes. 

vi 

Years  afterwards  I  learned,  of  course,  all  the  dis¬ 
heartening  details  of  my  father’s  financial  ruin.  They 
would  make  but  a  dull  story.  Late  in  the  year  1889 
his  foster-father  died  and  left  him  about  twenty  thou¬ 
sand  dollars,  the  remnant  of  a  once  considerable  for¬ 
tune.  With  this  sum  he  rashly  engaged  in  an 
undertaking  of  which  he  knew  nothing — the  importa¬ 
tion  of  Italian  fruits.  He  paid  an  exorbitant  sum 

[30] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


for  the  good-mil  of  a  worthless  firm,  for  lighters  that 
did  not  exist,  for  customers  that  could  not  be  found. 
In  three  months  he  was  ruined  and,  overcome  by  shame 
and  despair,  fell  ill.  His  illness  was  not  of  the  body. 
It  was  a  slight  attack  of  melancholia.  The  psychical 
inhibitions  were,  of  course,  paralysing.  Yet  no  one, 
not  even  his  physician,  quite  understood  that  fact. 
He  was  urged  to  see  friends  and  former  associates, 
to  seek  a  position  here  and  there.  But  it  was  impos¬ 
sible  for  him  to  face  the  world.  Aimlessly  he  wan¬ 
dered  about  and  reported  (and  probably  believed)  that 
he  had  met  only  coldness  and  rebuffs.  My  mother,  not 
dreaming  that  his  mind  was  sick,  credited  these  re¬ 
ports  ;  they  shook  her  faith  in  men  and  increased  her 
fundamental  self-distrust.  Thus  in  the  midst  of 
friends  and  kinsmen  who  would,  in  the  traditional 
Jewish  fashion,  have  scolded  loudly  but  helped  gener¬ 
ously,  my  father  and  mother  were  isolated,  embittered 
and  helpless.  .  .  . 

A  day  came  which  I  have  never  forgotten.  My 
father  and  mother  stood  in  our  living  room.  A  shaft 
of  September  sunshine  fell  upon  them  both.  My  father 
held  his  hand  to  his  mouth;  one  of  his  delusions  was 
that  his  tongue  was  slightly  paralysed;  my  mother 
turned  the  pages  of  a  letter.  Her  eyes  rested  on  him 
in  sorrow  and  perplexity  Suddenly  she  spoke : 
“  Would  you  like  to  go  to  America  V9  My  father  drew 
himself  up.  A  strange  and  almost  unnatural  relief 
came  into  his  face.  “Yes,”  he  gasped.  Then  he  turned 
to  me  with  the  first  smile  he  had  worn  in  weeks. 
“ Would  you  like  to  go  to  America,  to  Uncle  SJ” 

Long  before,  the  youngest  of  my  mother’s  four 
brothers  had  emigrated  to  America.  He  was  said  to 

[31] 


UP  STREAM 


have  prospered  moderately  there.  The  letter  was  from 
him.  The  relief  which  my  father  had  shown  was  fol¬ 
lowed  by  a  fever  of  activity.  Though  his  life  had  been, 
however  rash  and  foolish,  of  an  unblemished  honor, 
he  councilled  my  mother  to  secrecy.  She  blamed  her¬ 
self  bitterly  in  later  years  for  having  followed  his 
council.  He  was  like  a  man  trying  to  flee  from  himself. 

Weeks  of  turmoil  followed.  I  felt  keenly  the  hid¬ 
den  terror  and  the  loud  confusion.  My  father  was 
possessed  by  the  morbid  notion  that  he  himself  would 
have  to  carry  all  our  luggage.  He  sold  our  furniture, 
his  excellent  library;  with  difficulty  my  mother  saved 
the  silver  and  linen  and  my  books.  ...  It  was  autumn 
and  it  rained  and  rained.  My  mother  felt  a  thousand 
hesitations.  Again  and  again  she  was  on  the  point  of 
speaking  out,  of  appealing  to  her  brothers.  Pride  and 
self-distrust  and  my  father’s  sudden,  diseased  energy 
constrained  her.  Then,  one  day,  the  tickets  had  been 
bought  and,  with  a  very  ache  of  tragic  foreboding, 
she  faced  an  accomplished  fact.  Deep  in  her  heart 
she  nursed  one  bleak  consolation.  The  two  thousand 
dollars  with  which  my  father  intended  to  start  life 
in  America  were  in  her  keeping.  Whatever  happened 
she  determined  to  cling  to  enough  for  our  return  pass¬ 
age.  .  .  . 

Hamburg!  I  shall  never  forget  it,  though  I  was 
but  a  child  of  eight.  A  sky  of  slate,  an  angry  wind, 
ancient  streets  with  tall,  gabled  mediaeval  houses  lead¬ 
ing  to  a  square,  the  stuffy  hotel  full  of  horse-hair  cov¬ 
ered  chairs  and  sofas,  the  sad-faced  man  who  ex¬ 
changed  German  money  for  American,  the  broad  Elbe 
river  and  the  fog-horns  of  the  tugs  and  ferries.  The 
fog-horns  ...  I  stop  writing  and  listen.  Beyond  the 

[32] 


A  FAR  CHILDHOOD 


park,  close  by  the  river,  the  train  comes  in.  Its  whis¬ 
tle  blows  a  hoarse  blast.  Straightway — it  never  fails — - 
thirty  years  are  swept  away,  I  am  in  Hamburg  again, 
proud  of  my  long  great-coat,  filled  with  a  strange  sense, 
half  of  expectancy,  half  of  terror,  wondering  at  the 
whiteness  of  my  mother’s  face  and  the  unspeakable 
wistfulness  in  her  eyes.  .  .  . 

At  ten  in  the  forenoon  we  boarded  the  ferry  that 
was  to  take  us  to  our  ship.  It  was  the  old  Hamburg- 
American  liner  Suevia.  She  carried  only  first-class 
passengers  and  steerage.  We  were  among  the  former. 
The  trip  took  several  hours,  I  believe,  but  I  am  not 
sure.  Then  the  great  ship  received  us  and  to  me  it 
immediately  became  a  world  of  wonder.  At  luncheon 
I  marvelled  at  the  array  of  wine  and  water  glasses 
hanging  like  cnandeliers  above  the  tables,  at  the  swivel 
chairs  fastened  to  the  floor,  at  the  strange  sounds  on 
the  lips  of  other  passengers.  “They  are  speaking 
English,”  my  father  said  to  me. 

Dark  fell;  the  ship  was  in  motion;  my  father  paced 
the  deck,  up  and  down,  up  and  down.  At  last  a  shat¬ 
tering  doubt  of  this  adventure  had  come  into  his  mind. 
My  mother  stood  by  the  railing.  She  held  my  hand  in 
a  convulsive  grasp  and  covered  me  with  the  cape  of  her 
long  coat.  The  tears  rolled  down  her  cheeks  as  the 
twinkle  of  the  last  shore-lights  died  and  nothing  was 
left  but  darkness  of  the  land  she  was  not  to  see  again. 


[331 


CHAPTER  H 


The  Amebioan  Scene 

i 

The  Suevia,  scheduled  to  reach  New  York  on  the 
ninth  day,  did  not  arrive  until  the  fifteenth.  Not  a 
fleck  of  sunshine  all  those  days;  a  sky  almost  black, 
a  piping  wind,  a  turbulent  sea  dashing  up  in  huge  steel- 
gray  waves  with  bottle-green  under-curves  and  fierce, 
white,  fang-like  edges.  A  primaeval,  chaotic,  brutal 
sea.  The  great  ship  quivered  and  creaked  and 
wheezed ;  the  water  slapped  against  the  port-holes  and 
ran  down  the  round,  dim  panes;  almost  hourly  the 
propeller  was  punched  clear  above  sea-level  and 
whirred  with  a  naked,  metallic  grind.  .  .  .  My  mother 
was  hopelessly  sea-sick  the  whole  time;  my  father  and 
I  led  a  dim,  nebulous  existence,  when  possible  on  deck, 
when  not,  in  the  red-carpeted  saloon.  But  the  sea  got 
hold  of  the  innermost  core  of  my  mind ;  it  became  part 
of  my  life,  and  in  inland  places  I  have  often  caught 
myself  tense  with  desire  after  its  tang  and  roar. 

Our  land-fall  was  still  gray  but  quiet.  Afar  off 
lay  a  dim,  hook-like  shore.  The  voyage  had  liberated 
my  father’s  mind  from  terror  and  madness.  He  was 
so  strengthened  and  cheered  that  even  my  mother 
smiled.  To  come  to  land  at  all  seemed,  after  our  tre- 

[34] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


inendous  experience,  almost  like  coming  home.  But 
the  pier  at  Hoboken  was  rough  and  wild,  a  place  of 
hoarse  cries  and  brute  haste  and  infernal  confusion. 
A  kindly  German-American  fellow-passenger  helped 
us ;  saw  to  it  that  our  luggage  was  not  unduly  searched 
and  put  us  in  a  rumbling  hack  on  our  way  to  an  hotel. 
It  was  Meyer’s  Hotel,  a  comfortable,  unpretentious 
place.  "We  were  worn  out  and  rested  well  during  our 
first  night  on  American  soil  under  the  strange  mos¬ 
quito-bars. 

The  place  where  my  uncle  lived  and  whither  we  were 
bound  lay  far  away  in  the  South  Atlantic  States.  But 
my  father  and  mother  thought  that  we  ought  to  rest  for 
a  day  or  two  and  see  a  city  so  great  and  famous  as 
New  York.  A  curious  timidity  kept  us,  however,  from 
venturing  far  through  the  grime  and  rattle.  We 
crossed  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  I  know,  and  saw  the  gilt 
dome  of  the  World  Building,  then  the  tallest  structure 
on  this  hemisphere,  and  the  elevated  railroad.  But 
we  did  not  go  up  town  nor  into  the  financial  section, 
drifted  somehow  into  a  lake  of  mud  shaken  bv  trucks 
and  drays  on  Canal  Street  and  retreated  to  Hoboken. 

Being  ill-advised  we  took  ship  again  and  spent 
nearly  fifty  hours  on  a  coast-wise  voyage  South.  We 
could  eat  no  food.  Negro  stewards  served  it  and  over 
it  was  the  strange  flavor  ofi  bananas  and  Concord 
grapes.  There  was  no  storm  or  gloom  now.  But  the 
brilliantly  radiant  sea  was  rough  and  choppy  and  the 
steamer  small.  The  weather  grew  milder  and  milder 
and  when  we  steamed  into  Queenshaven  harbor  the 
day  was  like  spring. 

The  bay  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  in  the  world. 
In  its  fold  lies  the  old  city  with  its  gardens  and  veran- 

[35] 


UP  STREAM 


dahs  and  its  few  slender  spires.  Golden-green  islands 
extend  its  curves.  The  coloring  of  sea  and  sky,  in 
whatever  mood,  is  of  so  infinite  and  delicate  a  variety 
as  though  the  glow  and  splendor  of  all  the  jewels  in 
the  world  had  been  melted  there.  And  over  city  and 
bay  lies  a  rich  quietude  that  steals  upon  the  heart 
through  the  liquid  softness  of  that  untroubled  air.  I 
heard  my  father  and  mother  speak  of  the  beauty  of  the 
scene ;  my  own  sense  of  it  must  have  been  vague.  But 
I  cannot  disassociate  that  early  vision  from  an  hun¬ 
dred  later  ones.  For  that  city  and  bay  came  to  mean 
my  boyhood  and  youth,  high  passion  and  aspiration, 
and  later  a  grief  that  darkened  my  life.  I  close  my 
eyes :  I  can  see  every  stone  of  the  old  city,  every  wave 
of  the  bay.  But  my  mind  sees  both  garbed  in  a  cruel 
and  unearthly  sweetness.  My  bodily  eyes  could  endure 
to  see  neither  of  them  any  more.  .  .  .  Friends  of  my 
uncle  who  were  commissioned  to  meet  us  missed  the 
boat.  My  father  summoned  his  scraps  of  English, 
hired  a  four-wheeler  and  took  us  to  the  Queenshaven 
Hotel.  There  these  people  found  us,  astonished  that 
my  parents  had  not  yet  acquired  the  habits  of  poverty 
but  had  gone  boldly  to  the  best  hotel  in  the  city.  They 
took  us  to  their  house  where  the  children  astonished  me 
by  speaking  English.  It  did  not  seem  to  me  nearly 
so  curious  in  grown  persons.  I  stared  at  the  tattered 
Negroes  in  the  yard,  almost  too  tired  to  be  impressed 
by  any  strangeness.  In  the  afternoon  our  friends  took 
us  to  our  train,  shoved  us  into  a  day-coach  and  hur¬ 
ried  off. 

I  recall  vividly  the  long,  shabby,  crowded  car  and 
its  peculiar  reek  of  peanuts,  stale  whiskey  and  chew¬ 
ing-tobacco.  Half  of  the  passengers  were  burly  ne- 

[36] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


groes  who  gabbled  and  laughed  weirdly.  The  white 
men  wore  broad-rimmed  wool-hats,  whittled  and  spat 
and  talked  in  drawling  tones.  I  very  distinctly  shared 
my  parents’  sense  of  the  wildness,  savagery  and  rough¬ 
ness  of  the  scene,  their  horrified  perception  of  its  con¬ 
trast  to  anything  they  had  ever  known  or  seen.  Soon 
the  dark  fell  and  at  the  wayside  stations  queer,  pan¬ 
like  lamps  flared  up  in  reddish  ribbands  of  fire.  At 
one  station  a  group  of  men  entered  carrying  tall  cud¬ 
gels.  They  opened  jack-knives  and  proceeded  to  peel 
and  devour  these  cudgels.  My  mother  grew  almost 
hysterical;  my  father  racked  his  mind  and  discovered 
some  half-forgotten  information  on  the  subject  of 
sugar-cane.  ...  At  ten  o’clock  we  reached  Saint 
Mark ’s  and  trudged  out  of  the  car.  A  man  with  heavy 
moustaches  and  clad  in  a  red  sweater  lifted  me  from 
the  platform.  From  my  previous  experience  of  life 
I  judged  him  to  be  a  porter  or  a  cabby.  To  my  dis¬ 
gust  and  amazement  he  called  me  by  name  and  kissed 
me  on  the  mouth.  It  was  my  uncle. 

n 

In  1890  the  village  of  St.  Mark’s  in  South  Carolina 
was  raw;  it  had  more  than  a  touch  of  wildness  and 
through  its  life  there  ran  a  strain  of  violence.  It  con¬ 
sisted  of  two  principal  streets,  running  diagonally  to 
each  other  and  of  half  a  dozen  lesser  streets  that 
trailed  off  into  cotton-fields  and  pine-forests.  There 
was  a  cotton-seed  oil  mill,  a  saw  mill  and  twenty  to 
thirty  general  merchandise  stores.  Three  or  four  of 
these  were  housed  in  one-story  buildings  of  red  brick. 
For  the  rest  the  village  was  built  of  wood  and  many 

[37] 


UP  STREAM 


of  the  houses  were  unpainted,  showing  the  browned 
and  weather-beaten  boards.  There  was  a  Methodist 
Church  and  a  Baptist  Church,  each  with  a  grave-yard 
behind  it.  North  of  the  village  straggled  a  Negro 
grave-yard,  its  graves  decorated  with  colored  pebbles, 
bits  of  iridescent  glass  and  the  broken  shards  of  cheap 
vases.  Here  and  there,  behind  houses  or  in  chance 
lanes  were  small,  black,  one-roomed  huts  inhabited  by 
Negro  women.  These  women  were  in  domestic  service 
in  the  village  and,  as  I  learned  later,  plied,  in  addition 
and  quite  openly,  an  equally  ancient  but  less  honest 
trade.  Despite  eight  or  ten  bar-rooms  the  streets  were 
quiet  except  on  Saturday.  Then  the  village  flared  into 
life.  Many  hundreds  of  Negroes  came  in  from  the 
sparsely  settled  country;  they  rode  in  on  horses  or 
mules  or  oxen  or  drove  rough  carts  and  primitive 
wagons,  and  were  themselves  generally  clad  in  gar¬ 
ments  of  which  the  original  homespun  had  disappeared 
in  a  mass  of  gaudy  patches.  They  traded  and  drank 
and,  child-like,  spent  their  money  on  foolish  things — 
perfumes  and  handsome  whips  and  sweets.  Toward 
dusk  they  reeled  in  a  hot  turmoil  and  filled  the  air 
with  that  characteristic  odoi-  of  peanuts  and  stale 
whiskey  and  chewing  tobacco. 

I  watched  the  village  life  with  a  deep  sense  of  its 
strangeness  but  almost  without  astonishment.  Soon 
I  was  merged  into  it  and  felt  quite  at  home.  No,  not 
quite.  During  at  least  a  year,  at  lengthening  intervals 
of  course,  I  felt  a  sharp  nostalgia  for  the  land  of  my 
birth  and  its  life.  Suddenly,  at  the  edge  of  the  forest, 
a  sense  of  grief  would  overcome  me.  Somewhere  be¬ 
yond  those  dark  trees,  beyond  leagues  of  country,  be¬ 
yond  the  ocean,  lay  our  home.  .  .  .  And  I  would  weep 

[38] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


bitterly.  And  still,  in  my  maturer  years  the  edge  of 
a  forest  or  else  a  few  solitary  trees  at  a  great  distance 
bring  back  to  me  that  old  sense  of  wistfulness  and 
yearning — no  longer  for  definite  scenes  or  associations, 
but  for  the  mystery  of  delight  I  have  not  known,  beauty 
I  have  not  seen,  peace  I  have  sought  in  vain.  .  .  . 

The  Southern  country-side  awakened  in  me,  child 
that  I  was,  a  rich,  an  almost  massive  joy  in  nature. 
About  a  mile  beyond  the  lonely  little  railroad  station 
with  its  bales  of  cotton  and  acrid- smelling  sacks  of 
yellow  guano  lay  the  “red  hills. ? ’  These  hills  were 
not  very  high;  I  could  climb  them  easily;  they  were 
covered  with  very  tall,  very  straight  pine-trees  that 
seemed  to  me  shaft-like  and  sky-piercing.  Through 
a  fold  of  the  hills  ran  a  rapid,  very  shallow  little  brook 
over  a  bed  of  clean,  bright  pebbles.  In  spring  the 
dogwood  showed  its  white  blossoms  there;  in  the  mild 
Southern  autumn  a  child  could  lie  on  the  deep  layers 
of  brownish  pine-needles  and  play  with  the  aromatic 
cones  and  gaze  up  at  the  brilliant  blue  of  the  sky. 

The  summer  stirred  me  deeply.  I  had  been  used 
to  the  cool,  chaste,  frugal  summers  of  the  North.  Here 
the  heat  smote;  the  vegetation  sprang  into  rank  and 
hot  luxuriance — noisome  weeds  with  white  ooze  in 
their  stems  and  bell-like  pink  flowers  invaded  the  paths 
and  streets.  I  felt  a  strange  throbbing,  followed  by 
sickish  languor  and  a  dumb  terror  at  the  frequent, 
fierce  thunderstorms.  Both  my  intelligence  and  my 
instincts  ripened  with  morbid  rapidity  and  I  attribute 
many  abnormalities  of  temper  and  taste  that  are  mine 
to  that  sudden  transplantation  into  a  semi-tropical 
world.  .  .  . 

I  was  a  thorough  child  nevertheless  and  delighted 

[39] 


UP  STREAM 


in  certain  acquisitions  which  the  new  world  brought 
me — a  percussion  cap  pistol,  a  mouth  organ,  a  Jew’s 
harp.  Nor  did  I  give  up  my  old  life.  My  books  had 
been  saved  and,  one  day,  my  father  discovered  that  he 
had  forgotten  a  small  balance  in  the  Deutsche  Bank. 
For  this  money  he  ordered  books  from  Germany,  and 
I  came  into  possession  of  a  set  of  very  red  volumes: 
the  marvelous  chap-books  of  the  Reformation  age — 
Griseldis,  Genoveva,  Robert  the  Devil,  Dr.  Faustus — 
naive  and  knightly  or  magical  and  grim ;  and  of  two 
slimmer  volumes  called  Beckers  Erzahlungen  aus  der 
Alten  Welt,  which  contained  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey 
in  simple,  lucid  German  prose.  In  the  reading  of  these, 
especially  of  the  Odyssey,  culminated  the  imaginative 
joys  of  my  childhood.  I  do  not  know  Greek;  I  cannot 
read  Homer  in  the  original.  Yet  I  am  sure  that  I 
know  what  Homer  is.  In  a  plain  room  behind  the  store 
in  which  apples  and  cloth  and  furniture  and  plough¬ 
shares  and  rice  and  tinned  fish  were  sold  to  chatter¬ 
ing  Negroes,  I  sat  with  my  book  and  clearly  heard 

“The  surge  and  thunder  of  the  Odyssey” 

and  saw  Nausikaa  and  her  maidens,  white  limbed  and 
fair,  on  the  shore  of  the  wine-dark  sea,  and  dwelt  with 
Odysseus  on  the  island  of  Callypso  and  returned  home 
with  him  to  Ithaca — not  without  tears — and  listened  to 
the  twanging  bow-string  that  sped  the  avenging  ar¬ 
rows.  The  wood-cut  that  was  the  frontispiece  of  the 
little  volume  showed  Hermes  on  his  mission  of  com¬ 
mand  to  Circe.  Above  floats  the  god  with  his  staff 
and  his  winged  cap  and  sandals.  Below  him  stretches 
the  immeasurable  stream  of  ocean.  In  the  back¬ 
ground,  small  and  far  but  very  clear,  lies  an  island 

[40] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


with  a  tiny  fane  of  Doric  columns.  I  gazed  at  the 
picture  for  hours  and  knew  the  freshness,  the  grace 
and  the  clarity  of  that  morning  of  the  world. 

m 

My  uncle  and  aunt  received  us  into  their  queer 
little  house  which  was  huddled,  as  though  for  protec¬ 
tion,  against  the  shop.  The  walls  of  the  house  were 
of  the  rudest;  the  wind  blew  through  knot-holes  in  the 
timber.  My  father  and  mother  were  bitterly  disap¬ 
pointed.  My  uncle  had  sent  the  St.  Mark’s  Herald 
to  Berlin  and  my  father,  who  did  not  understand  the 
art  and  vocabulary  of  town-booming  nor  the  society 
items  of  an  American  village  newspaper,  assumed  that 
St.  Mark’s  was  a  town  of  some  importance  and  my 
uncle  a  prominent  citizen.  And  here  he  had  come  to 
a  squalid  village,  the  guest  of  a  man  well-enough  liked 
by  his  fellow  citizens  but  wretchedly  poor.  My  aunt, 
moreover,  though  a  woman  of  some  kindly  qualities, 
was  a  Jewess  of  the  Eastern  tradition,  narrow-minded, 
given  over  to  the  clattering  ritual  of  pots  and  pans — 
“ meaty”  and  “ milky” — and  very  ignorant.  On  the 
very  evening  of  our  arrival,  having  at  last  withdrawn 
to  the  one  spare  bed-room,  my  father  and  mother 
looked  blankly  at  each  other.  A  chill  wind  blew  in 
thin,  keen  streams  through  chinks  in  the  bare,  wooden 
wall,  the  geese  squawked  loudly  in  the  muddy  yard,  my 
aunt  was  heard  scolding  her  little  girls  in  a  mixture 
of  Yiddish  and  English,  a  little,  unshaded  kerosene 
lamp  made  the  grim  room  look  all  the  gloomier.  My 
mother  sat  down  on  the  springless  bed,  a  picture  of 
desolation.  The  sudden  plunge  unnerved  her.  All 

[41] 


UP  STREAM 


through  the  voyage  we  had  lived  on  our  accustomed 
plane  of  civilized  comfort.  Only  here  did  the  descent 
begin. 

She  had  one  consolation  that  apparently  justified 
the  whole  adventure.  My  father  was  a  changed  man. 
From  now  on  and  for  many  years  he  was  full  of  energy 
and  buoyancy,  splendidly  patient  and  brave,  always 
ready  to  cheer  her  in  her  fits  of  loneliness  and  depres¬ 
sion.  He  had  shaken  off  the  morbid  inhibitions  and 
immediately  started  out  into  the  village  to  see  what 
he  could  do. 

The  people  of  the  village,  storekeepers,  a  few  re¬ 
tired  farmers,  three  physicians,  three  or  four  lawyers, 
came  of  various  stocks — English,  Scotch-Irish,  German, 
even  French  and  Dutch.  But  they  were  all  descended 
from  early  nineteenth  century  settlers  and  had  be¬ 
come  thorough  Americans.  Everybody  belonged  to 
either  the  Baptist  or  the  Methodist  church.  The 
Methodists  were,  upon  the  whole,  more  refined,  had 
better  manners  than  the  Baptists  and  were  less  illi¬ 
terate.  Among  all  the  villagers  there  was  a  moderate 
amount  of  hard  drinking  and  a  good  deal  of  sexual 
irregularity,  especially  with  Mulatto  women.  I  have 
since  wondered  that  there  was  not  more.  The  life  was 
sterile  and  monotonous  enough.  They  were  all  kindly, 
even  the  rougher  ones,  not  very  avaricious,  no  drivers 
of  hard  bargains,  given  to  talking  about  shooting  but 
doing  very  little  of  it.  (During  the  two  years  of  our 
residence  two  men  were  shot  and  in  each  case  upon 
extreme  provocation.)  Also  so  far  as  their  light  went, 
they  were  liberal.  This  was  well  illustrated  by  the 
position  of  the  Jews  in  the  village.  Of  these  there 
were  about  ten  families,  all  recent  immigrants,  and  so 

[42] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


aliens  in  speech  and  race  and  faith.  Most  of  them, 
moreover,  were  quite  prosperous.  Yet  between  them 
and  these  Southern  villagers  the  relations  were  hearty 
and  pleasant  and  consolidated  by  mutual  kindness  and 
tolerance.  Only  one  Jew  and  that  was  my  father,  was 
looked  upon  with  some  suspicion  by  the  severer  among 
his  Gentile  neighbors.  The  reason  was  curious  and 
significant;  he  did  not  perform  the  external  rites  of 
the  Jewish  faith  and,  upon  entering  a  fraternal  life 
insurance  order,  he  smiled  and  hesitated  when  asked 
to  affirm  categorically  his  belief  in  a  personal  God. 

He  soon  saw  that  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  in 
St.  Mark’s  except  add  another  to  the  existing  shops. 
But  since  nearly  every  one  seemed  to  have  prospered 
and  since  the  quiet  and  the  easy,  democratic  atmosphere 
of  the  place  appealed  to  him,  he  hesitated  but  little. 
Help  and  good  advice  were  offered  alike  by  Jew  and 
Gentile  and,  at  the  end  of  a  few  months,  we  were  in¬ 
stalled  in  some  pleasant  rooms  beside  one  of  the  few 
brick  stores  on  Main  Street.  There  was  the  usual 
heterogeneous  stock  of  food  and  implements,  furniture 
and  dry-goods.  My  mother  went  to  Queenshaven  and 
bought  adequate  furniture  for  our  little  home. 

Although  she  yearned  very  bitterly  for  her  native 
land,  her  friends  and  kin,  for  music  and  for  all  the 
subtle  supports  of  the  civilization  in  which  she  was  so 
deeply  rooted,  life  opened  fairly  enough.  Domestic 
service  cost  next  to  nothing,  food  was  plentiful  and 
cheap.  Even  friends  were  not  wanting.  Our  landlord 
and  his  family,  prominent  members  of  the  Methodist 
church,  saw  soon  enough  that  my  father  and  mother 
were  of  a  different  mental  type  and  of  different  antece¬ 
dents  from  the  other  Jews  in  St.  Mark’s.  There  fol- 

[43] 


UP  STREAM 


lowed  an  exchange  of  visits.  Mrs.  C.  gave  my  mother 
much  good  advice,  explained  to  her  many  American 
ways  and  manners  that  seemed  very  strange,  and  tried 
to  console  her  in  regard  to  her  most  burning  and  imme¬ 
diate  problem — that  of  my  education.  This  friendship 
led  to  others.  And  so  when  summer  came,  we  who  had 
no  vegetable  garden — and  would  have  been  just  as  help¬ 
less  had  we  had  one — received  daily  attentions  from 
our  Gentile  friends:  baskets  of  tomatoes  or  okra  or 
sweet-corn  or  bell-pepper.  And  one  friend,  a  very  aged 
physician  who  liked  and  admired  my  mother  and  had 
a  dim  but  steady  perception  of  her  profound  spiritual 
isolation,  sent  her  weekly  a  great  basketful  of  roses. 
My  father,  at  the  same  time,  found  a  congenial  com¬ 
panion  in  a  young  lawyer.  The  two  played  chess  to¬ 
gether  and  from  him  my  father  borrowed  Shakespeare 
and  Byron,  Dickens  and  Thackeray  and  Scott  with 
whose  works  he  was,  like  all  educated  Germans,  thor¬ 
oughly  familiar  and  whom  he  now  read  with  avidity 
in  their  own  language.  We  saw  a  good  deal  of  my 
uncle  and  his  family  and  their  friends.  But  culturally 
we  really  felt  closer  to  the  better  sort  of  Americans 
in  the  community,  and  so  there  began  in  those  early 
days  that  alienation  from  my  own  race  which  has  been 
the  source  to  me  of  some  good  but  of  more  evil. 

IV 

I  do  not  know  how  I  learned  English.  My  memory 
which  is  so  clear  on  things  quite  trivial  fails  me  at 
this  crucial  point.  My  mother  characteristically  de¬ 
sired  to  engage  a  teacher  for  me.  And  for  this  pur¬ 
pose  my  uncle  introduced  the  Baptist  minister  of  the 
village.  At  the  end  of  one  lesson,  however,  of  which 

[44] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 

i 

my  memory  is  most  faint,  the  Reverend  Mr.  Cross¬ 
land  declared  that  far  better  results  could  be  obtained 
if  I  were  to  attend  his  school.  This  advice  was  fol¬ 
lowed  and  my  next  memory,  in  the  matter  of  language, 
shows  me  in  my  little  German  velvet  suit  and  cap 
seated  aloft  on  sacks  of  cotton-seed  in  the  postmas¬ 
ter’s  shop  and  explaining,  in  some  sort  of  English, 
the  peculiarities  of  German  life  to  a  crowd  of  tall, 
rough  tobacco-spitting  but  evidently  tender-hearted 
yokels.  Tender-hearted!  For  they  asked  the  quaint 
little  German  boy  to  come  again  and  again  and  never 
teased  him  but  were,  in  what  must  have  been  their 
amusement,  unfailingly  gentle  and  considerate. 

There  was  no  public  school  in  St.  Mark’s  in  my 
time.  And  so  the  Baptist  congregation  had  built  a 
school-house  of  rough  unpainted  timber  on  a  barren 
field  beside  the  church.  Here  Crossland  and  one  young 
woman,  in  a  single  gaunt  room,  taught  about  an  hun¬ 
dred  boys  and  girls,  ranging  in  age  from  seven  to 
seventeen.  Some  of  the  children  came  a  distance  of 
ten  miles  to  school  and  to  every  available  tree  were 
tethered  Texas  ponies  or  mules,  some  saddled,  some 
hitched  to  road-carts  or  buggies.  Details  that  stand 
out  in  my  memory  are  the  sombre  glow  of  the  cast- 
iron  stove  on  cold  days,  the  plaintive  notes  of  some 
birds  circling  over  the  little  Baptist  grave-yard,  the 
hair — yellow  as  wheat — and  the  brilliantly  white  teeth 
of  one  of  the  older  girls.  And  two  things  inspired  in 
me  a  vague  sense  of  fear:  the  switches  with  which  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Crossland  occasionally  beat  the  boys' 
legs  and  the  old  cigar-box,  filled  with  earth,  into  which 
he  spat  amazing  streams  of  repulsive  brown  juice. 
Sometimes  he  would  order  a  boy  to  empty  and  refill 

[45] 


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this  box  and  I  lived  in  terror  of  being  singled  out  for 
this  office.  I  never  was.  But  the  existence  of  this  box, 
betrayed  in  one  of  my  rare  moments  of  talkativeness, 
astonished  my  parents  so  overwhelmingly  that  they 
forthwith  removed  me  from  the  school. 

My  relations  to  my  fellow-pupils  were  slight.  There 
was  much  friendliness  on  both  sides,  but  a  dreamy, 
childish  absorption  kept  me  solitary.  I  am  certain  of 
only  this:  that  I  was  reprimanded  for  steadily  aban¬ 
doning  the  boys  ’  side  of  the  play-ground  during  recess 
and  losing  myself  among  the  girls.  They  were  gentler 
and  aroused  in  me  a  faint,  impersonal  perception  of 
comeliness.  .  .  . 

The  village  possessed  one  other  school  which  charged 
a  somewhat  higher  fee — two  dollars  a  month,  I  think — 
and  boasted  an  aristocratic  flavor.  It  was  kept  by  a 
broken-down  gentleman  of  Huguenot  extraction  who 
was  said  to  have  been  immensely  wealthy  and  to  have 
lived  in  a  state  of  barbaric  splendor  before  the  Civil 
War.  Major  Maury  was  a  man  prematurely  old, 
slightly  deaf  and  shaken  by  palsy.  His  features  were 
almost  hidden  by  harsh  bunches  of  beard,  and  hair 
grew  in  long  strands  out  of  his  ears  and  nostrils.  He 
sat  by  a  window,  smoking  a  pipe  and  chewing  tobacco 
at  the  same  time.  There,  in  a  weary,  mechanical  way, 
he  heard  the  lessons  which  we  were  supposed  to  have 
prepared  in  the  other  bare  rooms  or  on  the  porch  of  the 
windy  and  abandoned  cottage.  The  ten  or  twelve  pu¬ 
pils  played  and  studied  around  that  sunken-eved  old 
man  in  a  half-hearted  kind  of  way ;  the  manner  and  the 
mood  of  the  place  float  to  me  across  the  years  *  in 
images  of  chill  discouragement  and  mouldering  deso¬ 
lation. 


[46] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


But  by  this  time  my  mother,  with  the  energy  which 
marked  those  early  days,  had  acquired  a  considerable 
English  vocabulary  and  had  taken  council  of  her  friend 
Mrs.  C.  She  removed  me  from  Major  Maury’s  “ acad¬ 
emy”  and  proceeded  to  prepare  me  for  entrance  to 
the  High  School  of  Queenshaven.  It  was  a  fine  and 
brave  action.  She  had  been  in  America  less  than  a 
year;  her  pronunciation  was  very  imperfect;  she  had 
to  teach  me  with  a  German-Engiish  dictionary  in  hand. 
Yet  my  days  of  mere  dreamy  loitering  were  over  and  I 
have  never  had  instruction  more  accurate  or  solid. 
We  had  Appleton’s  Fifth  Reader,  Smith’s  English 
Grammar,  Noah  Webster’s  Speller,  a  geography  and 
an  arithmetic.  I  have  not  seen  those  books  since,  but 
I  can  visualize  many  of  their  pages  to  this  day. 

In  the  reader  I  came  upon  my  first  fragments  of 
English  literature:  Addison’s  Vision  of  Mirza, 
Childe  Harold’s  Farewell  To  His  Native  Land,  and 
The  Heath  of  Absalom,  by  Nathaniel  Parker  Willis. 
I  felt  even  then  that  the  last  piece  was  clumsy  and 
rhetorical,  nor  did  Byron  touch  me;  Addison’s  fable 
seemed  exquisite — as,  indeed,  it  is — and  I  read  it  over 
and  over.  .  .  .  But  stronger  and  coarser  food  for  my 
childish  mind  was  at  hand  in  the  English  books  which 
now  came  to  me  and  which  I  evidently  read  with  an 
entire  absence  of  effort.  The  first  was,  by  a  queer 
chance,  The  Swiss  Family  Robinson.  I  recognized  its 
inferiority  to  my  familiar  German  versions  of  Crusoe 
and  Gulliver,  but  its  strange  blending  of  the  exotic 
and  the  matter  of  fact  drew  me  on  and  I  sedulously 
skipped  the  moralizing.  ...  At  the  same  time,  how¬ 
ever,  there  was  given  me  a  set  of  yellowish,  paper¬ 
backed  books.  I  recall  the  title  of  but  one:  Tom 

[47] 


UP  STREAM 


Tracy,  The  Newsboy.  These  were  books  of  the  Hora¬ 
tio  Alger  type,  but  better  done,  I  think,  and  not  so 
stereotyped.  They  took  possession  of  my  mind  by  a 
strong  and  coarse  compulsion.  For  I  had  been  nursed 
upon  beauty.  The  clearness  and  grace  of  the  Homeric 
world,  the  pageantry  of  the  Middle  Age,  islands  in  the 
tropic  seas  at  the  ends  of  the  earth — these  were  pos¬ 
sessions  of  my  imagination.  And  so  these  tales  of  New 
York  boys  who  were  “ manly’ ’  and  “got  on”  seemed 
to  me  of  an  overwhelming  reality.  The  hideous  moral 
utilitarianism,  the  vulgar  confusion  of  values  in  these 
books  passed,  of  course,  entirely  over  my  head.  I 
didn’t  want  to  get  on;  I  hadn’t  a  spark  of  ambition;  I 
never  thought  or  prattled,  as  many  children  do,  of 
what  I  would  be  when  I  grew  up.  I  read  these  books, 
at  the  age  of  ten,  with  the  same  sense  of  deeply  satis¬ 
fied  absorption  in  the  fine,  narrowy  realities  of  life 
with  which,  at  the  end  of  another  decade,  I  first  read 
Vanity  Fair  and  Mme.  Bovary. 

y 

Suddenly,  upon  a  day  amid  the  steady  radiance  of 
that  Southern  summer  a  blind,  imperious  impulse  took 
hold  of  me.  Though  always  clumsy  with  my  hands  and 
careless  of  manual  skill,  I  hastened  into  our  little  yard, 
gathered  some  abandoned  boxes  and  built  me  a  rude, 
shaky  little  desk.  It  was  too  high  to  sit  at.  So  I 
stood  and  wrote — for  the  first  time — verse  and  prose : 
tales  of  disaster  at  sea,  of  ultimate  islands,  of  peace¬ 
less  wandering.  The  prose  and  verse  were  mixed  in¬ 
discriminately,  assonance  sufficed  in  place  of  rime,  all 
I  felt  was  an  intense  inner  glow.  It  was  all  instinc- 

[48] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


tively  done  in  German.  And  I  emphasize  this  fact  in 
the  development  of  an  American  since  that  childish 
outburst  marked  the  first  and  last  time  on  which  I 
used  my  original  mother-tongue  in  writing  as  a  matter 
of  course  and  without  a  sense  of  deliberately  limiting 
such  powers  of  expression  as  I  may  have.  .  .  .  That 
first  impulse  lasted,  with  daily  but  decreasing  passion, 
for  some  weeks.  Then  it  died  out.  I  neither  wondered 
nor  regretted  it.  To  me  it  was  a  solitary  game,  and 
most  of  my  amusements  were  solitary.  Perhaps  the 
shifting  from  one  language  to  another  caused  this,  per¬ 
haps  a  momentous  change  in  my  inner  life  which  now 
took  place. 

Our  friend,  Mrs.  C.,  was  a  very  fervent  member  of 
her  church.  She  was  too  well  bred  to  engage  in  crude 
proselytising.  But,  seeing  that  we  observed  no  Jew¬ 
ish  rites,  she  suggested  that  it  would  improve  my  Eng¬ 
lish  if  I  were  to  join  her  Sunday  School  class.  My 
mother  who  had  precious  memories  of  snow-swept 
Christmas  services  in  her  native  East  Prussian  village, 
made  no  objection.  My  father,  an  agnostic  reared  on 
Huxley  and  Haeckel,  had  no  prejudices  for  or  against 
any  religious  cult.  The  question  was  settled  much 
more  smoothly  than,  I  imagine,  Mrs.  C.  had  hoped. 
She  was  intensely  interested  in  her  new  pupil,  yet  her 
interest  was  never  tactless  or  obtrusive.  I  have  grown 
infinitely  far  away  from  her  teaching;  I  have  nothing 
but  kindness  for  her  memory. 

The  small,  white  church  with  its  wooden  belfry  was 
like  a  thousand  others.  It  stood  in  a  sun-flooded  street, 
behind  it  were  scattered  graves  and  then  cotton  fields 
running  to  olive  or  brownish  pine-forests.  The  calm 
of  the  village  Sundays  was  truly  sabbatical  and  the 

[49] 


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.  * 

clear,  solitary  ringing  of  the  church-bell  had  a  shrill 
and  primitive  sweetness  to  my  ears.  I  cannot  tell  by 
what  swift  stages  I  entered  into  the  faith  and  spirit  of 
the  place.  No  persuasion  was  used  and,  apparently, 
none  was  needed.  My  memory  shows  me  almost  at 
once  treasuring  small,  gilt  attendance  cards,  exchang¬ 
ing  these  for  larger  ones,  quite  at  home  in  lesson-quar¬ 
terlies,  golden  texts  and  the  familiar  hymn-tunes.  The 
best  of  the  latter  had  much  to  do  with  my  conversion. 
They  still  seem  to  me,  despite  my  present  devotion  to 
far  other  kinds  of  music,  to  express  in  no  ignoble  way, 
the  triumphs  and  the  aspirations  of  the  Christian  life. 
.  .  .  The  other  night,  with  a  dear  companion,  I  passed 
a  gaudy,  modern  church.  A  large  congregation  was 
singing  Bock  of  Ages.  As  by  a  common  impulse  we 
stopped  under  the  autumnal  trees  and  listened.  We 
knew,  without  speech,  the  strange  desiderium  in  each 
other’s  hearts.  For  the  poetry  and  beauty  and  the 
deep  human  need  voiced  by  the  Church  came  to  us  with 
that  melody.  Had  we  gone  in,  the  banal  prayers,  the 
tawdry  and  vulgar  sermon,  the  silly  self-righteous¬ 
ness  of  the  publicans  and  sinners  within  would  have 
irritated  or  amused  us  .  .  .  But  in  those  distant  years 
in  St.  Mark’s  the  poetry  and  the  beauty  and  the  human 
need  alone  reached  my  mind  and  my  emotions.  I  al¬ 
ways  staid  after  Sunday  School  to  attend  the  morning 
service.  But  I  am  sure  I  hardly  heard  what  the  lank, 
gesticulating  minister  said.  I  accepted  the  Gospel 
story  and  the  obvious  implications  of  Pauline  Christ¬ 
ianity  without  question  and  felt — as  I  now  know 
through  critical  retrospection — a  spirit  and  a  faith  not 
wholly  unlike  that  of  the  primitive  Church.  In  the 
phraseology  of  our  Protestant  sects,  I  accepted  Jesus 

[50] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


as  my  personal  Savior  and  cultivated,  with  vivid  faith, 
the  habit  of  prayer  in  which  I  persisted  for  many 
years. 

My  old  life,  however,  was  not  dead.  I  read  Homer 
and  my  German  legends  with  the  same  imaginative 
naivete  as  before.  But  I  did  absorb,  unconsciously,  of 
course,  a  very  large  set  of  moral  and  social  conventions 
that  are  basic  to  the  life  of  the  average  American.  I 
stress  the  word  absorb.  There  can  be  no  question  of 
reflection  or  conviction  on  the  part  of  the  child.  But 
at  the  age  of  ten  my  emotional  assimilation  into  the 
social  group  of  which  I  was  a  physical  member  was 
complete.  I  would  not  have  touched  any  alcoholic 
drink ;  I  would  have  shrunk  in  horor  from  a  divorced 
person;  I  would  have  felt  a  sense  of  moral  discom¬ 
fort  in  the  presence  of  an  avowed  sceptic.  I  believed 
in  the  Blood  of  the  Lamb  ...  I  find  it  hard  not  to  let 
an  ironic  note  slip  into  these  phrases.  But  they  mark 
the  sober  facts.  If  ever  the  child  of  immigrants  em¬ 
braced  the  faith  of  the  folk  among  whom  it  came — I 
was  that  child.  Insensibly  almost  I  withdrew  myself 
from  my  cousins  and  from  the  other  Jewish  children 
in  the  village.  The  sons  and  daughters  of  Mrs.  C. 
were  my  chief  playmates  and,  above  all,  a  cousin  of 
theirs  who  stirred  my  ever  watchful  sense  of  beauty. 
My  parents  I  instinctively  and  unquestioningly  ex¬ 
empted  from  this  division.  Nor  did  I  talk  about  these 
things  at  home.  I  listened,  as  always,  with  deep  pleas¬ 
ure  to  my  mother’s  stories  of  her  old  home;  I  was  in¬ 
terested  in  letters  and  gifts  that  came  from  our  kins¬ 
men  across  the  ocean.  But  the  old  life  grew  fainter 
in  its  influence;  it  seemed  hardly  any  more  a  part  of 
this  present  experiencing.  With  the  boys  and  girls  of 

[51] 


UP  STREAM 


the  Sunday  School  I  went  into  the  woods  and  fields 
for  flowers  at  Easter,  and  when,  at  Christmas,  my 
mother  was  saddened  by  yearning  for  her  German 
home,  I  sorrowed  only  in  her  sorrow,  myself  quite  at 
one  with  the  life  about  me. 

yi 

I  need  scarcely  say  that  my  parents  did  not  so 
readily  adapt  themselves  to  the  folk-ways  of  the  sur¬ 
prising  land  in  which  they  found  themselves.  My 
mother  especially,  had  an  emotional  tenacity  which 
made  her  road  the  harder.  Nor  did  she  find  a  degree 
of  compensation,  as  my  father  did,  in  the  apparent  ab¬ 
sence  of  that  pressure  which  he  had  experienced  in  a 
denser  moral  and  economic  environment.  She  consoled 
herself  with  the  thought,  however,  that  St.  Mark’s  was 
but  a  rude  backwoods  village  and  steadily  hoped  for 
fairer  conditions  in  some  larger  center  of  American 
civilization.  It  was  from  this  point  of  view  that  she 
cultivated,  in  her  scant  leisure,  a  growing  interest  in 
English  literature  and  worked  hard  at  my  training  in 
the  new  language. 

My  father’s  case  I  have  not  stated  adequately  in 
the  words — absence  of  pressure.  For  many  weeks  he 
was  like  one  liberated  from  a  dungeon.  It  was  really 
recovery  from  mental  illness.  But  he  did  not  realize 
that  and,  in  his  impulsive  way,  attributed  many  extra¬ 
ordinary  virtues  to  American  life.  He  discussed 
politics  with  friends  and  neighbors — it  was  the  Harri- 
son-Cleveland  campaign — read  the  old  Eclectic  Review, 
Byron  and  Dickens,  played  chess,  and  neglected  his 
shop  or  treated  the  Negro  customers  with  contempt- 

[52] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 

nous  disregard.  His  vision  was  fixed  on  far  other 
things.  He  was  an  excellent  draughtsman  and  a  store¬ 
house  of  scientific  knowledge.  In  Germany  he  had  in¬ 
vented  an  intricate  and  clever  machine,  had  obtained 
patents  for  it  there,  in  Austria  and  in  France,  and  had 
then  sold  it  for  a  moderate  sum.  He  now  read  in  the 
circular  of  a  Washington  firm  of  patent  lawyers  of  the 
urgent  need  for  a  non-refillable  bottle.  He  accepted 
this  statement  with  the  naivete  of  a  German  and  rigged 
up  a  little  work-room  in  the  back  of  the  shop.  The 
bottle  was  duly  invented;  the  device  was  a  notably  in¬ 
genious  one.  With  a  few  tools  he  himself  made  several 
beautifully  finished  models,  drew  up  the  specifications 
and — considered  his  fortune  made.  For  weeks  we  lived 
in  a  state  of  exquisite  anticipation.  How  much  would 
be  offered?  Twenty-five,  fifty,  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars  ?  My  mother  had  her  misgivings.  But  things 
had  gone  so  badly  with  the  realities  at  hand  that  she 
deliberately  indulged  in  this  beautiful  dream  ...  It  was 
the  last  time  .  .  . 

Must  I  add  that  the  bubble  burst?  A  letter  came 
from  the  patent  attorneys  so  glaringly  dishonest  be¬ 
neath  all  its  speciousness  that  there  was  no  room  for 
further  self-deception.  Certain  brutal  facts  had  to  be 
faced:  trade  had  never  been  good  and  my  father’s 
small  capital  was  all  but  gone.  For  a  good  part  of  the 
second  summer  we  lived  on  rice  and  beans  and  such 
tinned  goods  as  were  left  on  the  shelves  of  the  shop. 
In  autumn  there  was  a  respite  of  hope,  but  it  was 
quite  brief.  Creditors  became  troublesome  and  my 
father,  thoroughly  German  in  this  too,  never  dreamed 
that  he  could  leave  them  unpaid.  He  and  my  mother 
sold  their  costly  watches  and  chains  and  the  remaining 

[53] 


UP  STREAM 


stock  in  the  shop  brought  a  trifle  at  auction.  When  all 
debts  had  been  paid  there  remained  a  little  over  four 
hundred  dollars.  With  this  sum  my  father  determined 
to  take  his  little  family  to  Queenshaven,  the  nearest 
city  of  any  size,  and  begin  life  anew.  Throughout  he 
was  brave,  cheerful  and  active.  And  to  be  sure  he 
was  only  thirty-two  years  old  and  quite  unable  to 
estimate  either  the  qualities  of  the  environment  to 
which  he  was  going  or  the  fatal  development  of  cer¬ 
tain  forces  within  himself. 

To  me  it  was  like  starting  out  on  a  bright  adventure. 
The  days  of  the  Southern  winter  were  temperate  and 
golden  and  a  city  seemed  a  fine  place  to  go  to.  There 
would  be  the  bay  which  I  had  seen  and  ships  from  all 
the  ends  of  the  earth.  The  thought  of  school  I  tried  to 
put  away  from  me.  Then  there  was  the  fascinating 
bustle  of  packing  and  departure  and  a  journey  on  the 
train  which,  though  but  four  hours  long,  engaged  my 
imagination.  The  days  were  full  of  life  and  promise 
to  a  boy  of  ten  .  .  . 

— A  few  years  ago  I  passed  through  St.  Mark’s. 
The  train  rolled  along  the  old  embankment  on  the  edge 
of  which  we  used  to  gather  wild  blackberries.  I  am 
told  that  the  village  has  grown  and  is  now  a  county- 
seat.  But  it  seemed  small  and  remote.  No  doubt  they 
are  hustling  and  booming  far  more  efficiently  now  and 
the  smallness  and  remoteness  were  in  my  personal 
vision.  But  I  know  that  in  the  early  nineties  of  the 
last  century  there  lingered  in  that  village — as  there 
did  doubtless  in  many  other  places — something  of  that 
honest  simplicity,  that  true  democratic  kindliness 
which  we  like  to  associate  with  the  years  of  the  primi¬ 
tive  Republic.  In  the  name  of  those  qualities  and  the 

[54] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 


ideals  which  they  illustrate  the  capitalistic  tout  still 
seeks  to  rob  us,  the  brazen-tongued  demagogue  to  be¬ 
tray  us.  Those  things  are  gone.  But  as  part  of  my 
imaginative  inheritance  as  an  American  I  own  them  by 
virtue  of  the  two  y!e ars  of  my  childhood  spent  in  St. 
Mark’s  in  South  Carolina. 


[55] 


CHAPTER  in 


The  Making  of  an  American 

v 

I 

Queenshaven.  I  hear  the  sharp,  quick  rustling  of 
the  palmettos,  the  splash  and  murmur  of  the  incoming 
tide,  the  melancholy  song  of  Negroes  across  the  bay; 
I  see  the  iridescent  plaster  of  the  old  walls  at  sun¬ 
set,  the  crescent  moon,  so  clear  and  silvery,  over  the 
light-house,  the  white  magnolias  in  their  olive  foliage ; 
I  feel  the  full,  rich  sweetness  of  that  incomparable 
air:  above  all,  I  can  feel — across  the  gulfs  of  time  and 
circumstance — the  throb  of  the  impassioned  heart  of 
my  own  youth  .  .  .  Stale  phrases!  I  have  tried  be¬ 
fore  to  describe  the  city.  But  I  cannot  do  it.  No  man 
who  has  been  young  in  the  deep  and  true  sense  can 
render  into  words  the  scene  of  his  youth.  For  that 
has  taken  its  colors  from  a  poetry,  a  passion,  a  tragic 
beauty  that  are  beyond  all  speech.  I  see  a  sunset  now 
and  remark  that  it  is  fine  and  turn  away  to  worry 
over  yesterday’s  news  from  Russia  and  to-morrow’s 
article.  "When  I  was  a  lad  in  Queenshaven  the  solemn, 
streaming  sunsets  over  the  bay  were  song  and  heroism 
and  immortality  to  me.  When  the  sun’s  great,  red 
disc  set  behind  the  dusky  islands  and  the  first  stars 
pulsed  through  the  afterglow,  I  knew  the  universe  to 

[56] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


be  divine  and  perfect  and  my  eyes  filled  with  tears. 
Wordsworth  is  right  in  the  psychology  of  his  great 
ode,  whatever  we  may  think  of  its  metaphysics.  Life 
encroaches  upon  our  innermost  selves  and  hardens  and 
blunts  them.  The  glory  and  the  freshness  are  no  more. 

We  arrived  in  Queenshaven  on  Washington’s  birth¬ 
day.  There  was  a  parade  which  my  mother  took  me 
to  see,  but  the  parade  did  not  seem  amusing  to  either 
of  us  and  we  went  back  to  the  house  at  which  we  were 
staying.  It  was  a  boarding-house  recommended  to  us 
by  Mrs.  C.  The  house  was  a  spacious  one  with  a  fine 
verandah  on  each  story;  around  it  extended  a  large 
though  ill-kept  garden.  It  was  situated  near  the 
centre  of  the  town;  for  two  airy  rooms  and  board  for 
three  my  father  payed  eleven  dollars  a  week.  This 
was  considered  a  very  fair  price  in  Queenshaven  in 
1892.  The  only  thing  we  had  to  provide  was  the  fuel 
for  the  two  fire-places  on  chilly  days.  A  supply  of 
this  we  stored  on  the  back  verandah.  And  so,  in  a  day 
or  two,  we  were  comfortably  settled.  Almost  immedi¬ 
ately,  however,  there  came  to  us  in  some  impalpable 
way  a  sense  of  something  we  had  never  felt  in  St. 
Mark’s:  invisible  barriers  seemed  to  arise  about  us, 
a  silence  seemed  to  fall  where  we  were,  an  iron  isola¬ 
tion  to  be  established.  All  this  was  faint  at  first  and 
could  not  be  put  into  words ;  it  took  years  to  become  a 
definite,  tangible  thing;  I  did  not  fully  or  consciously 
face  it  until  it  had  been  partly  broken  down.  But  that 
was  too  late.  It  had  done  its  disastrous  work. 

Queenshaven  was  then — and  I  have  reason  to  think 
it  but  little  changed — a  city  of  very  rigid  social  groups. 
The  majority  of  these  were  denominational  in  charac¬ 
ter:  Catholic,  Methodist,  Baptist,  Presbyterian.  But 

[57] 


UP  STREAM 


any  family  m  any  of  these  groups,  primarily  the 
Protestant  ones,  that  attained  any  degree  of  educa¬ 
tion  or  wealth,  would  tend  to  withdraw  from  its 
original  friends  and  social  life  and  try,  by  any  means, 
to  be  reckoned  among  the  small,  conservative  group 
which  consisted  of  the  members  and  descendants  of 
the  old  Southern  slave-holding  aristocracy.  For  this 
group  was  and  is  considered  representative  of  the  city 
and  has  given  to  it  all  its  flavor  and  romance  and  fame. 
It  was  but  a  few  years  ago,  for  instance,  that  for  the 
first  time  a  common  man  and  not  a  member  of  a  very 
limited  group  of  families  was  elected  mayor  of  Queens- 
haven.  Now  it  is  clear  that  my  parents  could  find  no 
friends  among  the  humbler  Catholics  or  Presbyterians 
as  such.  And  it  is  equally  clear  that  persons  who  were 
shedding  their  next  of  kin  as  one  sheds  old  clothes  in 
a  struggle  to  attain  social  distinction  were  not  going  to 
impede  their  progress  by  so  much  as  the  acquaintance 
of  a  little  family  of  German  Jews.  The  interesting 
question  arises:  Why,  then,  did  not  my  parents  join 
either  one  of  two  other  groups — a  German- American 
and  a  Jewish  one?  Their  instinct  in  this  matter  was 
a  fine  although  a  quite  tragically  mistaken  one.  They 
conceived  the  country  in  which  they  had  made  their 
home  as  obviously  one  of  English  speech  and  culture. 
Hence,  without  a  shadow  of  disloyalty  to  their  German 
training,  they  desired  to  be  at  one  with  such  of  their 
English-speaking  countrymen  as  shared  their  tastes 
in  art  and  in  literature  and — mutatis  mutandis — their 
outlook  on  life.  They  saw  no  reason  for  associating 
with  North  German  peasants  turned  grocers  (although 
they  had  the  kindliest  feelings  toward  these  sturdy  and 
excellent  people),  nor  with  rather  ignorant,  semi- 

[58] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


orthodox  Jews  from  Posen.  They  had  not  done  so  in 
Berlin.  Why  should  they  in  America  where,  as  my 
father  used  to  observe  in  those  earliest  years,  a  demo¬ 
cratic  spirit  must  prevail,  and  where  neither  poverty 
nor  a  humble  employment  could  keep  an  educated  man 
from  the  society  of  his  intellectual  equals.  That  was, 
according  to  him,  the  precise  virtue  of  America,  the 
fundamental  spiritual  implication  of  American  life! 
The  result  of  my  parents’  acceptance  of  this  principle 
was  utter  friendlessness.  They  were  left  in  a  state  of 
solitariness  which  would  have  broken  stronger  and 
better-balanced  natures.  The  strain  of  wild  eccentric¬ 
ity  in  my  father’s  character  sharpened,  my  mother’s 
brooding  melancholy  deepened  from  year  to  year. 
When  after  nearly  fifteen  years  in  Queenshaven  a 
breach  was  made  in  that  inhuman  wall,  my  father  was 
hopelessly  “ queer”  as  a  social  being;  my  mother — 
whose  sweet  and  gracious  presence  atoned  with  peo¬ 
ple  for  his  rasping  ways — had  become  morbid  and 
morbidly  suspicious  of  this  belated  kindness.  I  look 
back  and  see  with  a  cruel  clearness  how  that  loneli¬ 
ness  ate  into  their  hearts;  how  though  they  rarely 
spoke  of  it,  they  were  warped  and  embittered  by  it. 
The  same  dreary  tasks  day  after  day,  year  after  year ; 
the  same  lonely  lamplight  in  the  evening;  never  a 
knock  at  the  door  or  the  sound  of  a  friendly  voice. 
And  for  the  first  ten  years  they  were  too  poor  to  go 
to  the  theatre  or  to  concerts. 

After  various  other  attempts  my  father  drifted 
into  the  furniture  business.  He  was  employed  by  a 
large  house  to  sell  furniture  among  the  Negroes  and 
collect  the  installments  from  week  to  week.  After  a 
day  of  this  wretched  toil — which  he  did  well  and  for 

[59] 


UP  STREAM 


k 

which,  during  the  second  decade,  he  was  not  ill-paid — ■ 
I  have  seen  him  spend  the  evening  intensely  absorbed 
in  Bradley’s  Appearance  and  Reality.  Such  was  his 
real  life.  And  my  mother  was,  in  her  native  tongue, 
a  true  poet.  And  never  a  footstep  on  the  stair  . . .  They 
had  accepted  the  promise  of  American  life.  Nor,  be 
it  observed,  would  their  fate  have  been  different  in  a 
larger  and  more  typical  American  community.  Happier 
it  would  have  been,  no  doubt.  For  they  would  have 
fallen  in  with  cultivated  Germans  and  Jews.  But  that, 
clearly,  does  not  touch  the  problem.  It  was  in  Queens- 
haven  that  the  Anglo-American  ideal  of  assimilation 
which  they  embraced  could  be  tested  and  adjudged. 

n 

The  situation,  as  I  have  said,  took  some  years  to 
define  itself.  Immediately  there  was,  for  us  all,  the 
beauty  and  stir  of  the  town.  For  me,  above  all,  there 
was  that  house  with  its  verandahs  and  its  tangled  gar¬ 
den.  The  early  Southern  spring  came  upon  the  city 
almost  at  once,  first  with  lilies  and  the  innumerable 
blossoms  of  the  wistaria,  then  with  roses  that,  dotting 
a  gnarled,  old  vine,  trembled  at  our  very  windows  and 
filled  the  verandah  with  petals.  My  mother  and  I  took 
daily  walks  and  inhaled  the  fragrant  loveliness  of  the 
place  and  the  season.  But  I  was  always  glad  to  re¬ 
turn  to  the  house.  I  played  at  its  being  a  castle  and 
myself,  upon  the  verandah,  a  warder,  a  Scottish  archer 
at  some  dark  keep  in  France.  For  at  an  auction  house 
my  father  had  bought  a  very  good  set  of  the  Waverly 
novels  and  I  was  living  in  a  magnificent  world,  a  page¬ 
ant  of  infinite  variety  and  splendor.  The  tall,  green 

[60] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


double-columned  volumes  were  rarely  out  of  my  bands. 
Within  a  few  months  I  had  read  all  the  novels,  or 
nearly  all.  I  never  succeeded  in  finishing  Count  Rob¬ 
ert  of  Paris,  although  it  has  left  with  me  a  vision  of 
empty  Byzantine  halls  through  which  is  heard  the  ring¬ 
ing  echo  of  a  solitary  mailed  tread;  I  did  not  read 
Waverly  till  years  later.  My  favorites  which  were  soon 
definitely  chosen  I  read  tirelessly  over  and  over: 
Quentin  Durward,  The  Talisman,  The  Heart  of  Mid¬ 
lothian,  Rob  Roy,  The  Betrothed,  The  Black  Dwarf, 
Anne  of  Geierstein,  A  Legend  of  Montrose.  I  liked  the 
gloomy  and  the  romantic ;  that  is  clear.  But  character 
was  beginning  to  appeal  to  me  too,  and  I  tasted  to  the 
full  of  the  fine  essential  humanity  of  the  Dean  family, 
of  the  Baillie  Nicol  Jarvie,  of  the  redoubtable  Dugald 
Dalgetty.  I  worshipped  Diana  Vernon  in  all  my  wak¬ 
ing  dreams.  My  students  in  later  years  told  me  they 
cannot  read  Scott.  Strange.  They  were  not  common¬ 
ly  so  sensitive  to  a  lack  of  grace  and  finish  in  style  and 
structure.  And  what  a  creator  of  men  and  scenes  and 
actions  Sir  Walter  was!  What  sweep  he  had,  what 
imagination,  what  ample  power.  As  for  me,  I  enjoyed 
even  those  opening  chapters  of  which  I  hear  such 
querulous  complaints;  I  enjoyed  the  very  notes  and 
puzzled  out  the  crabbed  Latin  as  soon  as  I  could  and 
felt  the  pride  of  knowledge.  I  was  glad  many  of  the 
novels  were  long.  They  seemed  like  the  weeks  and 
months  of  childhood ;  one  could  really  live  in  them  and 
forget  the  troublesome  world  of  duties  and  compul¬ 
sions. 

A  few  months  later  came  another  of  those  massive 
revelations  which  are  among  the  glories  of  our  earlier 
years :  Dickens.  In  lank,  acrid-smelling,  paper-backed 

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volumes  came  Pickwick,  Nickleby,  Chuzzlewit,  Oliver 
Twist,  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities.  Not,  alas,  David  Copper- 
field.  The  false,  strained  effort  in  A  Tale  of  Two 
Cities  I  was  too  young  to  perceive.  Yet  I  know  that  I 
could  not  live  in  it  as  richly  and  as  fully  as  in  the 
others — books  which  again  contained  a  world.  Not  a 
world,  I  think  now,  that  has  much  veracity  or  perma¬ 
nent  significance,  but  in  its  vast  and  busy  imaginative 
structure  self-consistent,  racy,  and  full  of  fine,  concrete 
things— -beef  and  punch  and  stage-coaches  and  gaols, 
thwackings  and  counting-houses,  practical  jokes  and 
prisons,  mud  and  rags  and  laughter  .  .  . 

I  still  prayed  every  night.  But  these  books  ab¬ 
sorbed  me  and  I  went  neither  to  Sunday  School  nor  to 
church.  My  faith  was  tenacious  enough,  but  it  grew 
less  active.  Then,  by  the  merest  accident,  there  came 
a  brief  but  burning  revelation.  The  boarding-house 
was  kept  by  an  Irish  family,  friendly  and  far  from 
ignorant.  The  head  of  the  house,  a  small,  straight, 
white-bearded,  crimson-faced  man,  very  silent  and  al¬ 
ways  more  or  less  in  liquor,  took  a  fancy  to  me.  One 
Sunday  morning  we  began  to  talk.  He  had  been  a  sea¬ 
faring  man  in  his  youth  and  I  found  his  talk  sharp 
with  the  tang  of  ships  and  voyages.  I  fetched  my  hat 
and  walked  on  with  him.  Somehow,  presently,  I  found 
myself  beside  him  in  the  family  pew  in  the  old  pro- 
Oathedral  and  witnessed  the  celebration  of  a  High 
Mass. 

The  reading  of  Scott  had  not  left  me  without  an 
imaginative  perception  of  the  rich  historic  dignity*  the 
human  associations  of  the  Roman  ritual.  But  it  touched 
to  the  very  quick  my  sense  of  beauty.  I  was  power¬ 
less  before  it  as  I  am  before  beauty  still.  The  organ 

[62] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


was  the  best  I  had  ever  heard  and  my  taste  in  music 
was  even  then  not  uncultivated.  But  the  glimmering 
vestments  of  the  priests,  the  dreamy  candles,  the 
strange  bell,  the  elevation  of  the  Host  on  which  fell  a 
pencil  of  softened  light — all  these  things  moved  me 
profoundly.  And  I  still  think  that,  if  one  could  but 
grant  the  tremendous  premises  all  these  symbols  do, 
in  a  lovely  and  human  fashion,  elevate  and  attune  the 
soul  .  .  .  When  we  came  out  of  the  dusky  church  the 
sunlight  seemed  raw  and  like  an  affront.  I  went  home 
but  did  not  speak  of  what  I  had  experienced.  All 
week  long,  however,  the  altar  candles  shone  like  fiery 
topazes  in  my  waking  dreams  and  the  sonorous  music 
echoed  in  my  ears.  I  was  sorry  that  I  had  not  a  rosary 
as  a  visible  symbol  of  that  marvelous  church. 

I  went  to  mass  every  Sunday.  A  Catholic  family 
of  French  descent  moved  into  the  boarding-house ;  the 
children  and  I  became  friends  and  so  I  was  naturally 
drawn  to  go  with  them.  The  services  became  my  great 
passion.  I  even  went  to  Vespers,  and  more  and  more 
it  seemed  to  me  that  to  be  a  priest  of  this  Church 
would  be  a  calling  that  would  satisfy  every  instinct 
of  my  nature.  Such  was  the  first  plan  that  I  made  for 
my  adult  years  .  .  . 

Was  it  all  a  child’s  shallow  religiosity?  Not  all,  I 
think.  For  I  had  a  sense,  shadowy  and  inarticulate, 
but  deep  enough,  of  our  homelessness  in  the  universe, 
of  our  terrible  helplessness  before  it.  I  had  seen  some¬ 
thing  of  misfortune  and  uncertainty  and  change  and 
my  mind  desired  then  as,  with  such  frugal  hope,  it  does 
now,  a  point  of  permanence  in  the  “vast  driftings  of 
the  cosmic  weather,”  a  power  in  which  there  is  no 
variableness,  neither  shadow  of  turning. 

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And  I  had  a  dream  which  added  another  element 
to  my  inner  life,  a  dream  that  has  stayed  with  me  in 
its  stark  and  preternatural  vividness  these  many  years. 
I  dreamed  that  I  was  in  a  large,  empty  room  with 
brown  walls.  The  door  opened  slowly  and  as  it  opened 
my  heart  beat  with  insupportable  fear.  My  mother 
entered  and  I  saw  at  once  that  her  face  was  ghastly 
white.  She  did  not  speak.  She  looked  into  my  eyes 
and  fell  forward,  and  I  heard  the  thud  of  her  head  on 
the  wood  .  .  .  From  that  time  on  my  prayers  were  all 
propitiatory.  I  often  prayed  and  wept  in  an  agony  of 
apprehension.  I  would  stop  on  the  street  suddenly 
and  pray  to  ward  off  evil  from  her.  I  invented 
strange,  childish  rituals  in  the  efficacy  of  which  I  would 
trust  for  a  time  and  then  abandon  them  for  others.  My 
freedom  from  care  was  gone  beyond  recall  and  all  my 
religious  emotions  centered  about  an  inner  core  of 
gloom. 

m 

In  October,  1893,  after  an  oral  examination  which, 
thanks  to  my  mother’s  instruction,  I  passed  with  ease, 
I  was  admitted  to  the  High  School  of  Queenshaven. 
The  school  building  is  plain  and  dignified,  somewhat 
after  the  fashion  of  an  English  mansion  of  the  eigh¬ 
teenth  century.  What  the  school  has  become  in  re¬ 
cent  years  I  do  not  know.  I  have  heard  rumors  of 
courses  in  bookkeeping  and  shorthand  and  other  dex¬ 
terities  that  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  education  of 
youth.  In  my  time  it  was  a  good  school.  The  pupils 
were  all  boys  and  they  were  taught  by  men.  They  were 
young  enough  to  be  grounded  in  the  necessities  of  a 
liberal  education  without  having  their  callow  judgment 

L64] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


consulted,  and  to  be  caned  when  they  were  lazy  or 
rowdy.  The  school  had  one  grave  fault :  Greek  was  an 
elective  study.  Through  this  fault  my  life  sustained 
an  irreparable  loss.  Yet  when  I  consider  what  might 
have  happened  to  my  mind  if  the  school  had  been  like 
the  High  Schools  of  1921,  I  am  filled  with  a  sense  of 
gratitude.  For  I  was  enabled  to  lay  the  foundations 
of  a  sound  and  permanent  knowledge  of  Latin  and 
French ;  I  was  taught  to  study  with  thoroughness  and 
accuracy  under  pain  of  tangible  and  very  wholesome 
penalties,  and  it  was  not  the  fault  of  the  school  that 
my  mind  was  and  is  all  but  impervious  to  any  form 
of  mathematical  reasoning. 

I  passed  into  the  rough  and  tumble  of  school  life 
with  a  distinct  shudder.  There  was  no  direct  hazing 
but  there  was  a  good  deal  of  rather  cruel  horse-play* 
You  were  apt  to  be  tripped  up  and  thrown  on  your 
back,  to  have  pins  and  needles  stuck  viciously  into  you, 
to  be  held  under  the  pump  until  you  nearly  choked. 
Also,  during  the  first  year,  I  was  taunted  with  being 
a  foreigner  and  a  Jew.  One  boy  especially  tormented 
me — a  tallish  fellow  with  huge  mouth  always  distorted 
by  idiotic  laughter,  hateful,  offstanding  ears  and  small, 
greenish  eyes.  I  was  no  match  for  him  in  strength  and 
he  persisted  in  cuffing  and  thumping  and  taunting  me. 
I  tried  to  avoid  him,  for  I  shrank  from  the  thought  of 
touching  him  as  shudderingly  as  I  did  from  his  touch. 
Then,  one  day  he  clapped  me  brutally  on  the  back 
and  yelled  with  laughter.  Two  scarlet  lights  danced 
before  my  eyes  and  I  leapt  at  his  throat.  Boys  hur¬ 
ried  from  all  sides  of  the  play-ground  and  formed  a 
ring  around  us.  Cries  arose:  “ Fight  fair!”  I  re¬ 
membered  how  the  contemptuous  thoughts  raced 

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through  my  brain.  Fight  fair !  Oh  yes,  give  the  over¬ 
grown  lout  a  chance  to  trounce  me  as  a  reward  for 
months  of  bruises  and  insults.  I  didn’t  want  to  fight 
him  and  suffer  more  undeserved  pain  and  humiliation. 
I  wanted  to  hurt  him,  to  hurt  him  so  effectively  that  he 
would  never  again  dare  lay  his  red,  bony  claws  on  me. 
I  did.  A  teacher  had  to  come  into  the  yard  and  order 
me  to  be  torn  from  my  gasping  and  bloody  victim.  I 
had  no  trouble  after  that  .  .  . 

Gradually,  too,  I  fell  in  with  a  group  of  boys  that 
belonged  to  the  gentler  families  of  Queenshaven.  I 
shall  have  more  to  say  of  them  later,  for  these  class¬ 
mates  passed  together  through  school  and  college  with 
me  and  so  lived  on  terms  of  daily  intimacy  with  me 
for  eight  years.  Through  their  companionship,  at  all 
events,  I  soon  felt  at  home  in  the  school,  an  equal 
among  equals  in  play  and  study. 

I  have  said  that  our  teachers  were  men.  Real  men, 
I  hasten  to  add,  not  the  spiritual  starvelings  who  are 
content  nowadays  with  the  wage-slavery  of  the  High 
School.  The  salaries  of  these  Queenshaven  teachers 
were  rather  better  than  such  salaries  are  to-day  and 
the  purchasing  power  of  money  was  of  course  far 
greater.  The  principal  was  the  only  man  I  have 
ever  known  who  truly  embodied  the  peculiar  ideal  of 
the  Christian  gentleman.  He  had  both  sweetness  and 
strength,  profound  piety  and  wide  charity.  I  can  still 
see  the  beautiful  benevolence  in  his  searching  blue  eyes 
and  hear  his  clear,  bell-like  voice.  I  do  not  know 
whether  he  consciously  thought  of  the  methods  of 
Arnold  of  Rugby;  it  is  certain  that  he  practiced  them. 
The  better  natured  of  my  schoolmates  and  I  never  re¬ 
sented  his  punishments ;  we  knew  he  was  incapable  of 

[66] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


inflicting  them  until  in  his  kind  and  manly  judgment 
forgiveness  would  have  been  morally  harmful  to  the 
offender.  His  influence  and  example  drew  me  back  to 
the  Methodist  church  ...  It  is  a  sad  reflection  that  this 
good  man’s  end  was  pitiful.  A  trusted  brother  in  the 
church  absconded  with  all  our  principal’s  modest  sav¬ 
ings.  They  were  small  enough,  for  he  was  liberal  in 
his  charities  beyond  the  bounds  of  discretion.  But  this 
blow  both  in  its  moral  and  in  its  physical  aspect  over¬ 
whelmed  him.  He  fell  into  a  state  of  melancholia  and  I 
remember  him,  in  later  years,  a  mild,  vague-eyed, 
broken  figure  on  the  Queenshaven  streets. 

I  shall  not  linger  over  the  burly  and  severe  but 
sound  pedagogue  who  taught  us  history  and  physics 
nor  over  the  graceful  youth — still  young  and  vivid  in 
his  middle  age — who  taught  French  and  German  with 
a  stringent  accuracy  and  sternness  that  added  virility 
to  his  Greek  profile  and  his  curving  locks.  It  is  on  our 
teacher  of  Latin  that  I  must  dwell.  I  cannot  estimate 
his  influence  over  me.  To  this  day  I  find  myself  using 
locutions  and  mannerisms  that  are  ultimately  trace¬ 
able  to  him.  He  was — I  beg  his  pardon  for  writing  of 
him  as  in  the  past,  but  to  me  he  lives  only  in  the  past, 
though  admirably  and  fruitfully  to  others  in  their 
present — he  was  the  son  of  an  Italian  gentleman,  obvi¬ 
ously  of  gentle  lineage  and  exquisite  breeding.  His  face 
and  head  and  hands  and  form  had  in  them  something 
indescribably  Roman.  Roman  of  the  empire.  But  for 
his  severer  modern  morals  he  might  have  been  a  friend 
of  Petronius  and,  like  him,  an  arbiter  elegantiarum. 
Or,  from  another  point  of  view,  a  gentleman  of  the  age 
t>f  Queen  Ann — a  friend  of  Addison.  Of  course  this 
does  not  render  the  whole  man.  But  he  was  singularly 

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free  from  all  the  modern  maladies  of  the  soul — a 
devout  Catholic  with  a  frugal  and  pagan  delight  in  the 
good  things  of  the  world,  a  lover  of  the  arts  without 
morbid  intensity  or  perverting  ambitions,  a  believer 
in  that  golden  mean  which  he  interpreted  so  well.  I 
need  hardly  say  that  the  particular  objects  of  his  tire¬ 
less  and  exquisite  zeal  were  Vergil  and  Horace  and, 
among  English  writers,  Milton  and  Tennyson  and 
Thackeray. 

As  a  teacher  he  was  strict,  though  always  with  a 
light  touch — stinging  the  lazy  and  loutish  by  some 
ironic  turn  of  speech.  He  taught  us  to  appreciate  a 
fine  and  mellow  Latinity  as  well  as  the  human  warmth 
and  living  power  of  the  literature  we  read.  But  he 
was  tireless,  too,  in  the  humbler  portions  of  his  task. 
I  find  that  I  know  my  Latin  accidence  and  syntax  bet¬ 
ter  to-day  than  graduate  students  who  “major”  in 
Latin  at  our  universities.  And  I  can  still  hear  his 
voice  as,  repeating  some  line  of  Vergil,  he  first  awak¬ 
ened  me  to  the  magic  of  a  great  and  perfect  style. 

“  .  .  .  et  jam  nox  umida  coelo 
praecipitat  suadentque  cadentia  sidera  somnos.” 

It  was  in  the  third  year  of  High  School.  He  was 
teaching  us  to  scan  Vergil.  We  were  repeating  a 
passage  in  unison.  Suddenly  he  swung  on  his  heel 
and  pointed  his  finger  straight  at  me:  “That  is  the 
only  boy  who  has  a  natural  ear  for  verse!”  he  cried. 
A  keen,  strange  quiver  went  through  me.  I  realized 
the  meaning  suddenly  of  that  constant  scribbling 
which  I  had  been  impelled  to  during  the  preceding 
months.  I  had  a  gift  for  literature!  I  knew  it  now; 
I  never  doubted  it  again.  My  fate  had  found  me. 

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THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


IV 

I  continued  to  buy  little  note-books  and  to  fill 
them  with  verse.  I  neglected  my  tasks  at  school  and 
bore  my  punishments  stolidly.  When  my  father  ex¬ 
plained  problems  in  mathematics  or  physics  to  me,  I 
did  not  listen  and  took  his  solutions  to  school.  They 
were]  correct,  of  course,  but  I  could  not  explain  them. 
I  wrote  dozens  of  stanzas  a  day;  I  was  obsessed  by  a 
strange,  aching  fever  and  found  no  relief  but  in  verse. 
The  verse,  of  course,  was  childish — half  sentimental, 
half-religious — yet  often  full  of  a  bitter  and,  as  it  now 
seems  to  me,  pathetic  yearning.  I  can  see  myself — 
(we  had  long  moved  into  the  two  upper  floors  of  a 
pleasant  enough  house) — a  boy  of  thirteen,  on  the  up¬ 
stairs  verandah  that  faced  the  sunset,  watching  the 
trees  grow  dark  against  the  sky  and  the  evening  star 
emerge.  There  I  stood  or  sat  throbbing  with  a  passion 
for  poetry  that  I  still  think  was  rare  and  not  ignoble. 
No,  for  there  was  blended  with  it  a  profound  humility, 
an  earnest  realization  of  the  utter  worthlessness  of 
what  I  was  writing  and  would  write  for  years  to  come. 
Only  at  the  end  of  that  long  vista  of  years  shone  the 
star  of  my  hope.  Some  day,  somehow,  I  would  be 
a  poet. 

I  abandoned  the  German  books  of  my  childhood.  I 
stopped  speaking  German  even  at  home.  Seeking  re¬ 
lief  from  the  passion  and  the  yearning  that  consumed 
me  I  read,  half-surreptitiously,  the  African  tales  of 
Rider  Haggard  or  even  cheap  detective  stories.  But 
this  period  of  merely  silly  reading  was  brief.  By  a 
happy  chance  I  became  acquainted  with  a  writer  who 
gave  tone  and  vigor  to  my  boyish  mind  and  fixed  it 

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upon  great  ideas  and  great  affairs.  I  am,  of  course, 
aware  now  of  everything  that  can  be  said  against 
Macaulay.  But  even  now  I  can  look  with  kindness 
upon  his  swaggering  omniscience,  his  two-penny  op¬ 
timism,  his  unscrupulous  rhetoric.  He  led  me  when 
I  was  half  a  child  to  Milton  and  Dryden  and  Johnson. 
But  for  his  noble  love  of  letters  I  might  have  been 
like  those  contemporary  youngsters  who  find  Paradise 
Lost  dull  and  The  Hind  and  the  Panther  stupid  and 
The  Lives  of  The  Poets  old-fashioned.  And  he  gave 
scope  to  my  imagination  in  the  world  of  man  and  his¬ 
tory  and  with  him  I  shared  the  pageantry  of  Clive’s 
conquests  and  was  stirred  by  the  trial  of  Hastings  and 
followed  the  campaigns  of  the  great  Frederic.  My 
acquaintance  with  him  began  curiously.  Our  principal 
had  sent  me  on  an  errand  to  another  class-room. 
There  the  teacher  was  reading  to  the  boys  a  descrip¬ 
tion  of  the  black  hole  at  Calcutta.  The  impression  of 
that  passage  stayed  with  me  for  many  days.  Finally 
I  asked  a  boy  in  that  class  the  name  of  the  author  and 
went  home  and  forthwith  demanded  that  author’s 
works.  So  on  my  thirteenth  birthday,  which  was  but  a 
few  weeks  distant,  my  parents  gave  me  a  plain  three- 
volume  edition  of  the  Essays.  I  was  intensely  happy. 
I  needed  nothing  more  that  whole  summer.  I  read  the 
essays  over  and  over  again — the  Addison,  the  Johnson, 
the  Leigh  Hunt — and  determined  to  become  not  only 
a  poet  but  a  scholar  and  a  man  of  letters. 

F or  a  whole  year  the  reading  of  Macaulay  was  my 
chief  pleasure.  I  read  novels,  at  times,  of  course.  For 
in  my  boyhood,  as  now,  I  always  combined  desultory 
with  intensive  reading.  And  my  passion  for  writing 
verse  increased  rather  than  diminished.  But  the 

[70] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


greatest  revelation  of  my  boyhood,  the  revelation  that 
awakened  me  definitely  to  literature  as  a  fine  art,  came 
during  the  last  year  of  my  High  School  course.  For 
during  that  year  we  read  under  our  admirable  teacher 
the  Odes  of  Horace. 

What  first  enchanted  me  was  the  poet’s  metrical 
systems,  the  nervous,  sonorous  Alcaic,  the  restrained 
pathos  of  the  Sapphic  cadences,  the  surge-like  sweep 
and  recoil  of  the  great  Archilochian  measures.  Was 
ever  language  wrought  into  a  larger  music?  There 
were  lines  and  fragments  that  I  repeated  over  and 
over  to  myself  with  endless  rapture: 

“Cras  ingens  iterabimus  aequor,” 

and 


.  .  sors  exitura  et  nos  in  aeternum 
exsilium  impositura  cymbae.,, 

And  that  other  which,  years  later,  I  found  had  also 
evoked  the  wonder  and  delignt  of  Stevenson : 

“aut  Lacedaemonium  Tarentum.” 

I  cared  for  the  poet’s  matter  too:  his  mellowness, 
his  essential  highmindedness,  the  sad  serenity  of  his 
acceptance  of  life,  his  sober  wisdom,  the  playfulness 
that  is  never  very  far  from  a  characteristic  Latin 
sense  of  the  transitoriness  of  all  things.  But  what 
influenced  me  most  deeply  was  his  stylistic  finish  a2id 
I  absorbed  into  my  innermost  being  a  hundred  just 
and  terse  and  lovely  phrases  that  I  shall  remember 
as  long  as  I  remember  anything.  I  looked  at  my  own 
verses  and  their  flabby  fatuousness  made  my  cheeks 
burn.  I  swore  not  to  write  again  until  I  had  learned 

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to  write,  and  set  about  learning  by  translating  the 
odes  of  Horace.  I  knew  but  dimly  that  a  host  of  ma¬ 
ture  and  learned  writers  had  tried  their  skill  upon 
my  poet.  I  was  acquainted  with  Milton’s  rendering  of 
the  “Quis  multa  gracilis,”  which,  with  all  proper 
reverence,  I  did  not  think  wonderful.  So  I  hammered 
away  quite  guilelessly  at  my  own  versions.  One  of 
them — it  was  of  the  radiant  and  yet  melancholy  ‘  ‘  Dif- 
fugere  nives”  (IV,  7.) — seemed  to  me  not  so  bad.  I 
put  the  manuscript  in  my  pocket.  But  every  day  when 
I  heard  the  keen  voice  of  our  teacher  my  courage 
failed  me.  At  the  end  of  weeks  filled  with  trepidation 
and  misery  I  handed  him  the  folded  sheet.  We  took 
our  seats.  He  spread  out  the  paper  before  him  on  the 
desk.  I  heard  my  heart  beat  and  the  blood  buzz  and 
hum  in  my  ears.  His  face  grew  very  red  as  it  did 
when  he  was  angry  and  my  heart  nearly  stopped.  He 
looked  up  and  gave  me  one  of  his  vivid  glances.  “Did 
you  do  that  yourself?”  I  could  only  nod.  But  evi¬ 
dently  he  saw  the  desperate  sincerity  in  my  eyes.  He 
sprang  up  and  smiled,  and  his  smiles  were  very  bril¬ 
liant.  “It  needs  improvement  here  and  there,”  he 
said.  “But  it’s  good,  it’s  charming!  You  will  go  far 
— far!”  And  he  read  it  to  the  class. 

I  suppose  we  grow  stolid  as  we  grow  older.  Doubt¬ 
less,  too,  I  was  more  sensitively  attuned  than  most 
boys  of  fourteen.  But  the  hours  and  days  that  fol¬ 
lowed  this  incident  were  such  as  to  outweigh  a  good 
many  of  the  sorrows  and  hungers  of  life.  I  took  the 
story  home  to  my  father  and  mother  and  they  were 
moved  by  it.  For  in  their  starved  and  lonely  lives 
they  had  set  all  their  hopes  on  me.  And  these  hopes 
were  liberal  and  fine.  From  that  day  on  they  shared 

[72] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


my  ambition  that  I  was  to  be  a  scholar  and  a  man  of 
letters,  even  though  that  meant  a  renunciation  of  the 
world’s  material  prizes  and  rewards. 

v 

During  my  last  year  at  High  School,  however,  a 
difficulty  beset  me  which  during  hours  and  days  made 
life  seem  hideous  and  hopeless.  There  arose,  very 
sharply  and  imperiously,  the  consciousness  of  sex.  By 
a  degrading  and  stupid  convention  the  problem  of 
sex  is  regarded  as  non-existent  among  Anglo-Ameri¬ 
cans.  No  doubt,  men  tell  jokes.  ...  So  did  the  boys 
with  whom  I  went  to  school — pointless,  nasty  jokes. 
But  these  boy's,  like  many  of  my  friends  later,  would 
have  regarded  a  discussion  of  sex,  the  immense  cen¬ 
tral  problem  of  sex,  as  a  little  vulgar  and  more  than  a 
little  disconcerting.  And  my  Americanization  was 
complete.  I  shared  that  point  of  view  or,  at  least,  very 
potently  believed  that  I  shared  it.  No  power  on  earth 
could  have  dragged  from  me  a  hint  of  my  emotions. 
I  attended  a  Methodist  church.  I  was  a  member  of 
the  Epworth  league.  Naturally  I  soon  fell  into  a 
wretched  conviction  of  sin  and  tried  to  double  the  zeal 
of  my  religious  exercises.  Yet  all  my  inner  life  was 
like  a  clear  pool  that  had  been  muddied  and  defiled. 
Neither  prayer  nor  study  were  of  much  avail  at  cer¬ 
tain  hours.  Relentlessly  my  mind  drifted  off  into 
imaginings  that  filled  me  with  terror,  but  that  seem 
to  me  now,  as  I  recall  them,  not  only  harmless  but 
rather  poetical.  I  was  the  more  convinced  of  the  wick¬ 
edness  of  my  thoughts  by  the  absurd  exaltation  of 
woman  which  is  so  characteristic  a  note  of  Southern 

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life.  I  had  been  taught  by  my  whole  social  environment 
to  believe  that  woman  is  a  being  without  passion,  with¬ 
out  any  feelings  of  the  grosser  sort.  No  one  who  has 
not  lived  in  the  South  will  credit  the  universality  and 
blatancy  of  this  preposterous  folly.  It  imparts  to  the 
Southern  .gentleman  a  courtesy  to  “good”  women 
which  no  self-sustaining  human  being  needs ;  it  makes 
his  behavior  to  women  who  are  not  “good”  literally 
currish.  But  these  conventions  had  entered  into  the 
very  texture  of  my  life.  Nothing  could  have  persuaded 
me  that  I  would  ever  have  thoughts  as  “ungentle- 
manly”  as  those  I  have  just  set  down.  A  gentleman 
believed  that  the  South  was  in  the  right  in  the  War 
between  the  States,  that  Christianity  was  the  true  re¬ 
ligion — (to  be  merely  suspected  of  liberality  in  points 
of  doctrine  added  a  bold,  mysterious  charm  provided 
you  were  a  man  and  over  fifty) — that  the  Democratic 
party  was  the  only  means,  under  Providence,  of  saving 
the  White  Race  from  obliteration  by  the  Nigger,  that 
good  women  are  sexless — “sweet  and  pure”  was  the 
formula — and  that  in  a  harlot’s  house  you  must  keep 
on  your  hat.  And  we  were  trained  to  be  “young  gen¬ 
tlemen.”  Well,  the  good  people  succeeded  with  me. 
I  shared  their  faith  and  their  morals  and  my  boyish 
soul  was  tormented  and  warped.  .  .  .  Some  years  later 
with  a  crowd  of  college-boys — all  pretty  drunk — I  went 
into  a  harlot’s  house.  We  came  out  as  we  had  gone  in. 
I  had  wanted  hard  to  take  my  hat  off.  The  insult 
seemed  so  futile  and  so  cruel.  But  I  didn’t  dare  risk 
the  gibes  of  my  comrades.  I  was  a  young  gentleman. 

In  one  respect  only  did  I  fail  to  achieve  a  complete 
conformity.  It  was  in  the  matter  of  games.  This-  cir¬ 
cumstance  added,  of  course,  to  the  distress  of  my  de- 

[74] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


veloping  manhood.  But  the  games  were  abhorrent  to 
me.  Or,  rather,  the  spirit  of  the  games.  For  I  loved 
the  out-of-doors  and  the  fine  exhilaration  of  physical 
effort.  But  foot-ball  and  base-ball  and  basket-ball 
were  all  competitive — aimlessly  competitive.  And  this 
struck  me  then,  as  it  strikes  me  now,  as  incomprehen¬ 
sible  and  odious.  As  an  experienced  college  professor 
I  later  confirmed  the  deliberate  judgment  of  my  boy¬ 
hood:  competitive,  inter-school  or  collegiate  athletics 
weaken  the  mind  by  assigning  purely  fictitious  values 
to  trivialities;  they  rob  the  best  of  our  youths  of  the 
joy  and  health  of  the  body  by  setting  upon  that  joy 
and  health  something  akin  to  a  horse- jockey’s  outlook 
and  a  gambler’s  corruption.  I  didn’t,  of  course,  ex¬ 
press  these  sentiments.  Both  at  school  and  later  at 
college  I  even  attended  the  games  in  which  our  institu¬ 
tions  were  engaged.  But  I  really  could  not  ‘‘root.” 
I  did  not  want  to  be  shamed  before  my  fellows;  but 
there  was  a  point  at  which  I  couldn’t  bear  to  be  shamed 
in  my  own  eyes. 

Amid  these  perplexities  I  plunged  the  more  ar¬ 
dently  into  my  studies.  Not  always,  not  indeed  gen¬ 
erally,  into  those  required  of  me,  but  into  my  own. 
For  at  this  time  my  father  found  it  possible  to  become 
a  member  of  the  Queenshaven  Library  Society  and  the 
great  dearth  of  books — no  public  library  existed — was 
over.  This  dearth  had  hitherto  been  a  bitter  problem 
to  us  all.  I  had  had  to  spend  my  tiny  allowance  wholly 
for  books :  I  still  treasure  small  editions  of  The  Scarlet 
Letter  and  of  Paradise  Lost  that  I  bought  after  a  hun¬ 
dred  deliberations,  brought  home  with  infinite  keen¬ 
ness  of  delight  and  then  tasted  and  absorbed  with  a 
high  and  almost  austere  rapture.  .  .  .  The  Library 

[75] 


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Society  had  been  founded  in  the  eighteenth  century 
and  possessed  an  excellent  stock  of  books.  There  were 
on  the  shelves  thousands  of  brown  leather  volumes  im¬ 
ported  from  England  before  the  Revolution  and  in  the 
early  years  of  the  Republic.  A  more  than  respectable 
array  of  modern  books  had  been  added.  But  those 
brown  tomes  allured  me.  They  seemed  actually  to 
smell  of  letters  and  of  learning.  And,  no  doubt,  on  the 
theatre  of  my  own  mind  I  played  a  little  of  a  prig’s 
part.  But  I  could  have  been  worse  employed  and  be¬ 
fore  the  end  of  the  summer  that  followed  my  fifteenth 
birthday  I  had  read  the  greater  part  of  Swift  and  Dry- 
den,  Pope  and  Addison,  Johnson  and  Goldsmith. 
Swift  and  Johnson  I  reread  constantly,  drawing  out 
the  books  again  and  again.  My  opinion  of  life  was 
not  high,  and  already  I  felt  not  wholly  an  alien  amid 
the  stark  gloom  of  the  great  Dean  and  the  gentler 
melancholy  of  Johnson. 

My  graduation  from  High  School  approached.  I 
had  been  an  idle  and  sometimes  a  mischievous  pupil 
during  the  middle  years  of  my  course.  But  during  the 
last  year  I  had  retrieved  everything.  I  graduated  well 
and  was  permitted  at  our  commencement  to  read  in 
public  one  of  my  versions  of  Horace.  The  verses  were 
printed  in  the  Queenshaven  Courier  and  prominent 
citizens  noticed  and  praised  me.  Far  away  it  all  seems, 
infinitely  farther  even  than  the  space  of  the  years  be¬ 
tween,  and  provincial  and  trivial!  Yet  I  would  en¬ 
grave  its  memory  upon  that  which  is  more  enduring 
than  brass  for  the  joy  and  hope  it  brought  to  my  father 
and  mother — those  patient,  beautiful  and  saddened 
souls. 


[76] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


VI 

It  is  clear  then  that,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  I  was  an 
American,  a  Southerner  and  a  Christian.  My  home, 
it  may  he  urged,  was  foreign  in  spirit.  But  that  was 
true  to  a  very  much  slighter  extent  than  may  he  sup¬ 
posed.  For  my  father  and  mother  were  both  bookish 
people  and  all  the  hooks  they  read  were  English.  Our 
conversation,  whether  it  turned  upon  these  books,  as  it 
often  did,  or  upon  my  father’s  business  or  my  studies 
was  all  of  the  very  texture  of  the  civilization  amid 
which  we  lived.  My  mother  with  that  self-distrust 
which  was  always  hers,  spoke  less  and  less  of  the 
memories  which  formed  so  large  a  part  of  her  inner 
life.  In  a  superficial  sense  I  shared  her  joy,  to  be  sure, 
in  letters  and  gifts  from  Germany.  Or,  at  least,  I  was 
happy  in  her  happiness.  For  I  was  intensely  sensitive 
to  her  needs  and  moods.  My  Americanization  was, 
nevertheless,  complete.  It  differed,  to  be  quite  scrup¬ 
ulous,  from  the  Americanism  of  my  comrades  at  school 
and  college,  but  it  differed  by  a  touch  of  self-conscious¬ 
ness  and  a  touch  of  militancy.  It  was  at  this  time  that, 
in  my  thoughts  and  emotions,  I  came  upon  a  distinct 
and  involuntary  hostility  to  everything  either  Jewish 
or  German.  I  seemed  to  have  a  premonition  that,  in 
some  subtle  way,  these  elements  in  my  life  and  fate 
might  come  between  me  and  the  one  thing  in  the  world 
I  cared  for  supremely — the  poetry  of  the  English 
tongue. 

I  recall  a  certain  Christmas.  My  father’s  employer 
had  given  him  a  present  in  money.  And  we  three  went 
out  into  the  Queenshaven  streets.  They  were  ill-lit  and 
there  was  no  moon.  But  I  remember  the  clear  sparkle 

[77] 


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of  the  large  stars  over  the  small,  dark  houses.  A  chill 
wind  blew  in  from  the  bay,  but  the  streets  were  dry 
and  clean.  I  cannot  recall  what  my  father  bought  for 
my  mother  or  for  himself.  But  I  asked  for  a  copy  of 
Tennyson.  And  I  took  home  with  me  the  Globe  edition. 

I  needed  nothing  more;  my  mind  and  my  heart 
were  filled.  Yet  I  did  not  read  many  poems  to  the 
end.  For  their  beauty  overwhelmed  me  and  a  lump 
came  into  my  throat  and  my  eyes  blurred.  Not  at  the 
story  or  the  sentiments  to  which,  indeed,  I  scarcely 
attended.  But  at  the  sheer  beauty  of  the  diction  and 
the  versification.  The  May  Queen  and  The  Grand¬ 
mother  left  me  cold.  I  was  rather  ashamed  for  Tenny¬ 
son  that  he  had  written  them.  The  poems  that  gave 
me  such  unbearable  keenness  of  delight  were  The 
Dying  Swan,  The  Lotos  Eaters,  the  Lines  to  Vergil! 
.  .  .  Soon  thereafter,  deliberately  teaching  myself  to 
read  French  for  pleasure,  I  read  for  the  first  time 
Taine’s  Histoire  de  la  litterature  anglaise  and  was 
overcome  with  indignation  and  disgust  at  the  famous 
parallel  between  Tennyson  and  Musset.  I  borrowed 
the  Frenchman’s  verses  which  I  understood  but  ill. 
Well  enough,  however,  it  seemed  to  me,  to  think  his 
work  almost  vulgar  and  quite  trivial  compared  to  the 
aristocratic  sweetness,  the  noble  attitude  of  England’s 
laureate.  Could  spiritual  Americanization  in  a  lad 
have  gone  farther?  Could  anyone  native-born  have 
held  sentiments  more  correct  with  a  higher  passion? . . . 

I  buried  the  rebellious  things  in  me  deeper  and 
deeper — sex  and  doubt.  I  hated  to  admit  the  fact  of 
our  social  isolation.  Not  out  of  snobbishness.  But 
because  I  wished  to  live  in  harmony  with  the  society 
of  which,  by  virtue  of  its  English  speech  and  ideals,  I 

[78] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 


felt  myself  so  integral  a  part.  So  I  deliberately  shut 
my  eyes  to  that  exclusion  which,  of  course,  I  felt  far 
less  keenly  than  my  parents.  I  saw  something  of  my 
comrades,  I  had  my  poetry;  I  took  long  daily  walks 
with  my  mother,  walks  which  I  loved.  For  her  sensi¬ 
tive  sympathy  never  failed.  My;  father  did  not  care 
for  verse  as  verse ;  my  schoolfellows  respected  my  abil¬ 
ity  without  comprehending  my  tastes.  She  was  my 
confidant  and  friend. 

I  spent  the  summer  vacation  that  followed  my  grad¬ 
uation  from  High  School  in  turning  out  more  versions 
of  Horace,  in  writing  verses  of  my  own  and  in  enor¬ 
mous  reading.  I  looked  forward  to  autumn  and  to  my 
entering  college  with  subdued  but  keen  happiness.  I 
meant  to  make  a  name  for  myself  at  the  famous  old 
college  and  I  also  knew  now  the  means  by  which  I  was 
to  conquer  for  myself  a  life  of  learned  ease  and  poeti¬ 
cal  activity,  and  for  my  parents  a  secure  and  pleasant 
future.  I  meant  to  be — consider  the  immense  irony  of 
these  boyish  hopes  and  assurances — a  professor  of 
English  literature. 


[79] 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  Making  of  an  Anglo- American 

I 

The  campus  of  the  College  of  Queenshaven  oc¬ 
cupies  several  city  blocks.  Tall  trees  stand  in  it  and 
the  shadows  of  their  branches  tremble  in  the  sunshine 
upon  the  Grecian  portico  and  on  the  warm,  brown 
walls  of  the  old  building.  A  place  of  peace — gentle 
with  an  eighteenth  century  repose.  There  are  not 
students  enough  for  boisterousness,  no  bleak  or  snowy 
weather  ever  adds  a  touch  of  roughness  or  hardship 
to  the  scene.  No  engineering  courses  had  been  estab¬ 
lished  in  my  time ;  the  chair  of  biology  was  practically 
vacant.  We  strolled  across  the  campus  learning  to 
smoke  cigarettes  or  pipes,  reading  our  Latin  or  our 
English  poets.  Chemistry  and  mathematics  were  the 
snakes  in  my  Paradise.  I  could  not  crush  them,  but 
I  tried  to  forget  their  existence  except  during  the 
actual  hours  of  recitation  and  laboratory  practice. 
The  latter  were  hideous.  Outside  the  leaves  fluttered 
and  the  swallows  wheeled  and  poetry  sounded  with  her 
golden  voice.  And  I  had  to  potter  around  with  noxious 
and  stenchful  stuffs.  Of  the  cosmic  meaning  of  these 
experiments  no  one  told  me  a  word.  What  I  have 
learned  of  the  problem  of  matter  as  it  affects  our 

[80] 


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thinking  concerning  man  and  God  I  have  learned  for 
myself.  I  hated  having  to  remember  how  you  manu¬ 
facture  sulphuric  acid  or  get  zinc  from  its  ore.  But 
these  troubles  were  small  and  transitory.  If  I  had  not 
been  so  long  a  pedagogue  by  trade,  fiercely  resentful  of 
the  time  an  unilluminating  science-teaching  steals 
from  the  humanities,  these  scars  upon  the  memories  of 
my  college  life  would  be  forgotten.  For  that  life  was, 
upon  the  whole,  happy  and  the  sinister  elements  grew 
to  be  so  only  through  their  consequences. 

My  freshman  year  was  marked  by  several  radical 
and  fortunate  changes  in  the  college.  A  new  presi¬ 
dent  was  called :  an  energetic  young  man,  a  scholar  and 
a  thinker;  my  admirable  old  teacher  of  Latin  was 
transferred  from  the  high  school  to  our  college;  a 
young  man  was  brought  from  a  Western  university 
to  fill  the  chair  of  English.  The  last  event  was  the 
most  important  of  all  to  me.  For  years  Ferris  was 
the  dominant  influence  in  my  life.  He  more  than  any 
one  made  me  what  I  was  during  my  early  manhood. 
I  bore  him  a  true  affection;  I  bear  him  that  affection 
still.  Deep,  strange,  silent  things  seemed  to  divide  us 
for  a  time.  But  that  division  is  over.  We  are  to-day 
upon  a  firmer  ground  of  friendship  and  understand¬ 
ing  than  ever  before.  Ferris  was  under  thirty  when 
he  came  to  Queenshaven,  but  already  his  hair  was 
completely  white.  His  mouth  was  hidden  under  a 
drooping  blond  mustache;  his  prominent  features  were 
his  sensitive  nose,  his  high,  fine,  narrow  forehead,  his 
large  violet-blue  eyes.  A  fragile,  gracious,  spiritually 
virile  figure — a  trifle  slovenly,  unkempt,  with  an 
absorbed,  aloof  air  that  would  yield  to  a  very  human, 
quaintly  sweet  smile.  He  was  very  shy  and  had  a 

[81] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


touch  of  irony  in  his  speech.  The  average  student 
didn’t  like  him;  to  the  exceptional  student  he  came  at 
once  to  mean  much.  To  me — everything.  I  had  had 
practically  no  instruction  in  English  and  Ferris  took 
notice  of  me  at  once,  of  my  ambition  and  of  my  talent. 
He  taught  me  how  to  train  myself  to  write ;  he  gave  me 
generously  of  his  time;  he  paid  my  efforts  the  fine 
tribute  of  searching  criticism  and  merciless  veracity. 
During  the  four  years  that  I  was  his  pupil  I  do  not 
think  he  praised  me  twice.  But  now  and  then  a  certain 
earnestness,  almost  solemnity  would  come  into  his  eyes 
and  then  I  knew  that  I  had  approached  my  goal  a  little 
nearer.  For  I  recognized  in  him  at  once  a  singularly 
subtle  and  exquisitely  tempered  literary  intelligence. 
Delicate  in  health,  drifting  through  the  years  down  the 
warm,  enervating  current  of  Queenshaven  life,  he  has 
done  nothing.  I  suppose  he  still  sits  by  the  library 
window  or  in  his  study,  playing  with  a  reed-stemmed 
clay-pipe,  savoring  with  that  wonderful  aesthetic  taste 
of  his  the  finest  literature,  planning  a  little  and  sink¬ 
ing  back  into  his  delicate  Epicureanism.  A  stronger 
body,  a  rougher  life,  a  goad  of  love  or  hunger,  a  little 
less  consciousness  of  gentility — and  he  might  have 
been  a  master. 

Gentility!  He  could  not  even  in  those  years  quite 
forget  that  his  father,  a  professor  at  Washington  col¬ 
lege,  had  been  a  friend  and  colleague  of  General  Lee 
and  that  he  was  a  Virginian  aristocrat.  His  mind  had 
fared  forth  boldly  on  all  the  quests  of  man ;  apparently 
his  intellectual  flexibility*  and  moral  freedom  were 
boundless.  But  at  the  slightest  translation  of  that 
freedom  into  action,  were  it  by  so  much  as  a  vivid  ges¬ 
ture,  a  spiritual  discomfort  seized  him  and  the  gen- 

[82] 


UP  STREAM 


tleman  conquered  the  man.  Since  art  means  passion 
and  since  all  passion  has  a  touch  of  wildness,  he  was 
ever  too  much  of  a  gentleman  to  be  an  artist.  Not  with 
his  mind  and  heart,  but  with  his  unconquerable  tribal 
self  he  always  loved  something  else — a  quiet  manner, 
reserve  of  speech,  an  aristocratic  nose — a  little  better 
than  he  loved  truth  or  beauty.  To  illustrate  the  right 
humility  before  greatness  he  once  told  his  students  that 
he  would  have  been  glad  to  blacken  Shakespeare’s 
boots.  He  was  quite  sincere,  but  he  would  not  have 
stood  the  test.  The  real  Shakespeare — the  morbid 
lover,  the  truant  husband,  the  shabby  actor,  the  poet 
whose  divine  energy  of  speech  must  have  lent  storm 
and  flame  to  his  daily  discourse — that  man  would  have 
filled  Ferris  with  discomfort  and  dismay.  ...  We  saw 
a  very  great  deal  of  each  other  in  the  course  of  the 
years  and  I  know  that  his  affection  for  me  was  very 
real.  But  he  never,  I  think,  quite  forgave  me  for  being 
what  I  am. 

My  mother,  with  a  woman’s  sensitiveness,  had  a 
perception,  unreasonable  but  very  real,  of  the  ultimate 
truth.  At  home  I  spoke  of  Ferris  daily  during  my  four 
years  at  college.  He  and  his  influence  filled  my  life. 
And  often  my  mother  would  hint  at  a  touch  of  disloy¬ 
alty  in  him  to  me.  I  always  defended  him  hotly,  and 
indeed  her  reasons  were  invariably  quite  wrong.  But 
the  sting  of  the  situation  was  that  I  knew  her  to  be 
in  the  right.  In  the  best  and  deepest  hours  we  spent 
together  there  was  in  him  a  shadow  of  withdrawal  from 
me — a  shadow  of  watchfulness,  of  gu^rdedness.  .  .  . 
A  shadow,  but  it  was  there.  He  too  must  have  realized 
it,  must  have  reflected  on  it,  for  I  also  stood  for  some¬ 
thing  in  his  life,  and  I  am  unwilling  to  believe  that 

[83] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


such  a  nature  as  his  yielded  without  a  struggle  to  the 
injustice  of  its  tribal  self.  That  shadow,  at  all  events, 
is  gone  now  and  it  seems  hateful  to  record  it.  But 
I  must  do  so  since  during  many  years  it  remained  in 
my  mind  as  the  symbol  of  an  essential  isolation. 

n 

Such  feelings  and  reflections,  of  course,  occupied 
my  mind  but  at  occasional,  comfortless  moments  dur¬ 
ing  my  years  at  college.  Had  I  been  but  a  shade  less 
sensitive,  even  these  moments  would  have  been  spared 
me.  My  true  life  was  given  over  to  the  absorption  of 
Ferris’  teaching,  of  his  intimate,  unspoken,  but  ever 
richly  implied  point  of  view.  That  point  of  view  I 
can  sum  up  in  but  one  word,  and  that  word  is — Eng¬ 
land.  His  attitude  to  the  intellectual  and  artistic  life 
of  America  was  a  little  detached,  a  little  patronizing, 
a  little  amused.  The  serious  thing  in  American  life 
lo  him  was  its  continuing  of  those  English  social  tra¬ 
ditions  within  our  older  commonwealths  of  which  he 
was  the  product.  But  the  home  of  his  soul  and  of  his 
imagination  was  by  some  Surrey  lane  or  Kentish  field 
or  Westmoreland  lake.  To  me,  whose  love  of  English 
poetry  had  been  so  largely  an  aesthetic  rapture,  he 
communicated  those  other  and  even  richer  associa¬ 
tions  which  soon  blended  in  my  inner  life,  as  they  had 
done  in  his,  into  a  spiritual  loyalty  to  England  that 
was  all  the  deeper  because  we  were  forbidden  the  more 
obvious  loyalties  granted  to  her  children  and  her  citi¬ 
zens.  We  were  glad  and  proud  to  be  the  dependents 
and  colonials  of  that  mighty  mother  from  whom  came 
the  song  and  the  beauty,  the  traditions  and  the  fair 

[84] 


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imaginings  that  were  the  best  of  life  to  us.  .  .  .  Ferris 
knew  both  French  and  German  well.  But  he  read 
those  foreign  literatures  with  a  cool  and  somewhat 
arrogant  curiosity.  And,  during  my  boyish  years,  I 
absorbed  that  attitude  as  well. 

England!  How  should  I  not  have  loved  her!  I 
knew  nothing  of  life.  And  there  were 

The  magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas  in  fairy  lands  forlorn — 

there  that  road  to  Canterbury  along  which  the  immor¬ 
tal  pilgrims  fared;  there  were  the  gardens  and  the 
learned  seats  where  Milton  studied  and  Gray  brooded 
and  Tennyson  wove  those  early  all  too  golden  verses ; 
there  was  that  other,  lovelier  city  of  the  dreamy  spires 
where  Newman’s  voice  floated  through  Saint  Mary’s 
chapel  and  the  lad  Arnold  heard  it  and  remembered  it 
forever.  There  was  that  motley  city  of  the  thousand 
visions:  Milton  in  blindness  beholding  the  bowers  of 
Paradise;  Dryden  at  Will’s  coffee-house  and  Pope,  a 
large-eyed,  crooked  child  seeing  the  great,  old  man; 
Addison  writing  The  Campaign  in  shabby  lodgings; 
Johnson  talking  out  of  the  depth  of  his  noble,  sombre 
heart;  the  fiery  Hazlitt,  the  exquisite  Lamb  gathered 
about  Coleridge  in  deep,  heroic  talk,  and  Shelley,  wild¬ 
eyed,  weaving  here  too  the  colors  of  his  incomparable 
dreams.  And  far  beyond  the  city  were  Windermere, 
clothed  so  truly  to  me  in 

A  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land 
The  consecration  and  the  poet’s  dream, 

and,  most  sacred  of  all  and  most  beloved — Laleham 
churchyard  where  Arnold  sleeps.  How  faint  these 

[85] 


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fragments  of  that  imaginative  vision  of  England!  I 
summon  it  before  me  again  as  it  arose  in  my  soul  in 
those  impressionable  years  in  all  its  storied  wealth, 
in  all  its  singing  splendor.  No  bodily  eye  was  needed. 
I  knew  the  whiteness  of  the  Dover  cliffs,  the  ‘Teague- 
long  rollers’ ’  on  the  Isle  of  Wight,  the  sylvan  Wye 
“that  wanderer  through  the  woods,”  and  that 

wet,  bird-haunted,  English  lawn 

the  thought  of  which  came  with  a  pang  of  beauty  which 
was  almost  pain.  What  wonder  that  in  my  mind,  tak¬ 
ing  color  from  my  friend’s,  this  England,  this  land  of 
tne  soul,  became  indissolubly  one  with  that  British 
empire  which  we  conceived  of  as  spreading  the  noble 
things  we  loved  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  We  rejoiced, 
like  the  very  children  of  her  soil,  in  her  “far-flung 
battle  line,”  and  like  the  poet  she  drove  out  and  killed, 
heard  with  our  very  ears  and  with  our  very  hearts 

The  measured  roll  of  English  drums 
Beat  at  the  gates  of  Kandahar. 

In  1898  or  1899  I  read  an  article  on  Kipling  in  the 
Quarterly  Review.  I  took  his  books  from  the  library 
and  was  at  once  drawn  into  the  full  current  of  British 
imperialism.  Of  his  verses,  though  I  admired  and  imi¬ 
tated  them,  I  always  had  a  lurking,  unadmitted  doubt. 
But  the  stories  took  me  by  storm.  And  the  best  of 
them  are,  indeed,  beyond  praise  in  their  magnificent 
concreteness,  their  Homeric  freshness.  The  shallow¬ 
ness  and  meanness  of  the  man’s  outlook  on  life  were 
quite  beyond  my  perception.  I  let  what  is  surely  the 
enduring  part  of  him  persuade  me  to  accept  not  only 
the  artist  but  also  the  politician.  I  heartily  believed 

[86] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


a  Little  Englander  to  be  a  fool  and  a  contemptible 
fool ;  I  conceived  of  the  Boers  not  as  obstacles  to  con¬ 
quest  and  rapacity  but  to  the  spreading  of  a  heaven¬ 
sent  light.  I  believed  that  America  was,  by  virtue  of 
our  community  of  speech  and  literature  with  England, 
a  sharer  in  this  light  which  was  to  be  forcibly  shed 
upon  all  the  dark  places  of  the  earth,  and  I  found  it 
hard  to  forgive  William  Vaughan  Moody  for  counsel¬ 
ling  us  in  his  great  Ode  Written  In  A  Time  Of  Hesita¬ 
tion  to  let  the  island  men  of  the  Philippines  go  free. . . . 
I  found  the  other  day,  among  old  papers,  a  manuscript 
ode  to  England  which  I  wrote  when  I  was  eighteen.  I 
remember  that  Ferris  praised  it  and,  indeed,  the  verses 
are  not  without  merit.  But  it  interested  me  as  con¬ 
firming  so  thoroughly  the  facts  in  my  development 
which  I  have  here  set  down.  I  was  a  Pan-Angle  of 
the  purest  type;  so  was  Ferris,  so  were  my  class¬ 
mates — lads  of  English  and  Anglicized  French  Hugue¬ 
not  descent — so  were  the  half  dozen  cultivated  lawyers 
and  business  men  and  journalists  in  the  community 
who,  about  this  time,  began  to  take  an  interest  in  me 
and  in  my  work.  All,  at  least,  except  one.  But  he,  a 
wealthy  Jewish  physician  who  had  turned  Methodist 
in  his  boyhood,  avoided  all  questionable  subjects, 
prayed  at  love  feasts  in  church  and,  though  he  sur¬ 
reptitiously  distributed  alms  among  the  poor  Jews  of 
the  city,  achieved  a  complete  conformity  of  demeanor. 
My  father,  furthermore,  became  as  fervid  an  admirer 
of  Kipling  as  myself.  The  poet’s  politics  he  scarcely 
noted,  for  he  had  not  my  inner  reasons  for  a  blind  ad¬ 
herence  to  that  faith.  He  did  not  want  to  be  an  Eng¬ 
lish  poet.  .  .  .  Acquaintances,  with  a  warning  gravity 
of  demeanor,  whispered  to  me  later  that  I  haven’t  a 

[87] 


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sense  of  what  England  stands  for  in  the  world.  Who 
was  ever  firmer  in  that  faith?  Not  Eliot  nor  Hibben 
nor  a  wilderness  of  blood-thirsty  professors.  Only 
I’ve  done  a  little  living,  a  little  thinking  .  .  .  especially 
a  little  thinking  since.  That  grave  look  in  my  friends’ 
eyes  which  used  to  impress  me  seems  like  the  blank 
gravity  of  idiot  children.  .  .  . 

m 

I  still,  during  these  years,  attended  the  Methodist 
church,  taught  Sunday  School  and  was  a  leader  in  the 
Epworth  League.  I  did  this  partly  because,  up  to  my 
junior  year,  my  Christian  faith,  though  cooler,  was 
still  unshaken,  partly  through  the  influence  and  friend¬ 
ship  of  the  physician  whom  I  have  mentioned,  but 
also  because  I  found  a  good  deal  of  unreserved  human 
friendliness  among  these  people.  And  I  needed  this. 
The  relations  between  my  class-mates  and  myself 
were  very  cordial;  several  of  them  often  visited  me 
as  I  did  them.  Yet  there  always  came  a  point  at  which 
I  felt  excluded.  They  themselves  belonged  to  a  definite 
social  group.  They  neither  drew  me  into  this  group 
nor  did  they  have  the  good  sense  or  good  feeling  to  be 
silent  before  me  concerning  these  more  intimate  af¬ 
fairs.  I  do  not  think  their  exclusion  of  me  was  at  all 
a  matter  of  reason  or  determination;  it  was  quite  in¬ 
stinctive.  By  virtue  of  my  work  on  the  college  maga¬ 
zine  and  the  attitude  of  the  professors  toward  me, 
they  respected  me.  Personally  they  liked  me  well 
enough  and  elected  me,  without  hesitation,  in  due  time, 
president  of  our  literary  society  and  editor-in-chief 
of  the  magazine.  As  tribesmen  their  resistance  to  me 

[88] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


was  tacit  but  final.  A  pushing  or  insinuating  fellow 
might,  assuredly,  have  made  his  way.  But  my  sensi¬ 
tiveness  was  so  alert  that  I,  no  doubt,  at  times  created 
division  by  suspecting  it  and  at  once  shrinking  away. 
But  of  the  fundamental  fact  there  could  be  no  doubt. 
It  was  terribly  confirmed  to  me  by  an  incident  in  my 
senior  year.  I  was  the  most  prominent  student  on  the 
campus.  My  classmates  called  themselves  my  friends 
— voluntarily  and  without  my  seeking.  And  these  very 
friends  gathered  to  form  the  first  chapter  of  a  Greek 
letter  fraternity  at  our  college  and — left  me  out.  I  did 
not  know  then  that  the  fraternities  do  not  admit  Jews. 
I  do  not  know  now  whether  they  practice  this  exclusion 
tacitly  or  by  regulation.  I  never  spoke  of  the  incident 
either  at  school  or  at  home.  Our  president  who 
founded  the  chapter  does  not  know  to  this  day  that  I 
so  much  as  observed  the  matter.  I  did,  with  a  pro¬ 
found  discouragement,  with  a  momentary  grim  pre¬ 
vision  of  the  future  which  I  fought  bitterly  to  blot 
out  lest  I  should  lose  all  my  hopes  and  see  all  my  life 
crumble  before  me  at  eighteen.  I  withdrew  into  my¬ 
self  with  sullen  pride  and  intensified  ambition,  con¬ 
vinced  that  the  incident  was  local,  exceptional,  unrep¬ 
resentative  and  un-American.  Such  was  my  simple 
faith.  .  .  . 

Gradually,  too,  I  was  losing  the  satisfaction  that 
I  had  once  taken  in  the  society  of  my  Methodist  friends. 
For  in  my  eighteenth  year  the  world  began  to  clear 
for  me.  Until  then  my  passion  for  literature  had  been 
so  exclusive  that  neither  my  reasoning  power  nor  my 
power  of  observation  had  developed.  These  were  now 
somewhat  suddenly  awakened  and  were  the  source  of 
constant,  sharp  revelations.  I  remember  a  garden 

[89] 


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party  given  by  a  bishop ’s  widow  to  the  young  people 
of  the  Epworth  League.  It  was  a  very  charming  gar¬ 
den  with  beds  full  of  old-fashioned  flowers;  honey¬ 
suckle  and  clematis  covered  the  piazza  that  gave  on 
the  lawn.  There  were  chairs  and  tables  and  ice-cream 
and  cakes  were  served  by  girls  dressed  in  white.  The 
glint  of  the  sunlight  on  their  smooth  hair  and  the  rus¬ 
tle  of  their  starched  skirts  gave  me  a  faint,  sensuous 
pleasure.  And  one  of  the  girls  had  a  slow,  liquid 
laugh.  The  young  men,  in  duck  trousers  and  blue 
coats,  were  clerks,  with  a  sprinkling  of  students  from 
a  Methodist  college.  For  almost  the  first  time  I  lis¬ 
tened  to  the  talk  objectively — the  kind  of  talk  carried 
on  a  thousand  times  a  day  in  a  thousand  American 
communities.  It  was  mostly  what  is  known  as  chaff, 
feeble  to  the  point  of  imbecility.  How  could  these 
people  laugh  at  it?  Laugh  they  did.  But  the  laughter 
though  loud  was  without  true  mirth.  For  that  requires 
a  vigor  either  of  mind  or  temper  that  was  far  to  seek. 
It  was  all  witless,  stale  and  puerile  beyond  conception 
— refined  through  sheer  weakness,  well-mannered  and 
yet  incurably  ill-bred.  The  pastor  went  from  table 
to  table — a  tall,  bony,  large-mouthed  man.  He  spoke 
of  the  beauty  of  the  afternoon  and  of  the  delightfulness 
of  seeing  young  people  so  happy.  His  long,  pale  lips 
writhed  in  smiles  over  his  jagged  teeth.  As  he  pressed 
my  hand  all  I  could  think  of  was  his  fondness  for 
talking  about  purity,  and  of  his  wife,  emaciated  with 
child-bearing,  and  their  six  or  seven  small,  depressed 
children.  ...  A  withered,  eager,  bead-eyed  spinster 

told  of  a  friend  of  hers  who  was  a  missionarv  in  Mex- 

«/ 

ico.  I  wondered  if  the  Mexicans,  though  less  hygienic 
and  refined,  weren’t  in  all  likelihood  more  interesting 

[90] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


and  vital  than  the  spinster  and  her  friend.  If  they  were 
ignorant,  it  was  the  ignorance  of  a  primitive  folk. 
These  people  who  held  Genesis  to  be  a  scientific  docu¬ 
ment  and  whined  over  the  damnation  of  the  heathen 
were  ignorant  by  temperament,  profession  and  pig¬ 
headedness.  I  couldn’t  tear  myself  away  until  the 
party  broke  up  at  sunset,  because  the  girls  uttered 
their  inanities  with  such  sweet  lips  and  such  pallid 
teeth.  But  I  went  home  alone  through  the  lovely  dusk 
of  Queenshaven  and  my  mind  recorded  one  of  the  ear¬ 
liest  judgments  that  marked  the  passing  of  the  boy 
into  the  man. 

But  my  growing  isolation  was  more  than  compen¬ 
sated  for  by  a  new  joy  in  thought — its  purity  and  hardi¬ 
hood  and  strength.  My  father,  wearying  of  my  dog¬ 
matic  assents,  insisted  on  my  reading  Fiske’s  Cosmic 
Philosophy.  I  have  not  seen  the  book  in  years.  I  do 
not  know  what  I  would  think  of  it  now.  But  it  was  an 
admirable  choice  for  an  awakening  intellect,  I  read 
it  with  an  icy  fervor.  A  cool,  strong  light  seemed  to 
irradiate  my  mind.  This  picture  of  the  universe  was 
so  overwhelmingly  and  evidently  nearer  the  truth  than 
that  represented  by  Christian  doctrine  that  all  my 
emotional  forts  collapsed  at  once.  I  proceeded  to  read 
Huxley  and  Darwin,  Draper  and  Lecky.  Yet  I  held 
very  fast  to  my  faith  in  God  and  immortality  and  I 
still  prayed  in  the  silences  of  my  mind,  though  I  could 
not  have  justified  the  habit  on  any  intellectual  basis. 
Nor  did  I  doubt  the  correctness  and  elevation  of  that 
system  of  Christian  morals  under  which  we  live.  In 
a  word,  my  attitude  was  that  of  so  many  thousands  of 
semi-educated  Americans:  I  was  rather  proud  of  my 
breadth  of  view  on  matters  of  theology  and  failed  quite 

[91] 


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to  suspect  my  refusal  to  think  on  other  matters  of  far 
more  pressing  practical  import.  I  would  have  felt 
quite  at  home  in  that  half  way  house  of  the  mind — 
Unitarianism.  And  indeed,  some  years  later,  I  did 
sustain  a  brief  and  tentative  connection  with  that  re¬ 
spectable  form  of  faith. 


iv 

During  the  last  two  years  of  my  college  course  my 
plans  for  the  future  became  more  definite.  I  “  ma¬ 
jored”  in  English  and  having  taken  all  the  courses 
the  college  offered,  my  friend  Ferris  gave  several 
courses,  both  philological  and  literary,  for  me  alone 
and  thus  enabled  me  to  do  a  year’s  graduate  work 
while  I  was  still  an  undergraduate.  I  must  emphasize 
the  fact  that  both  he  and  several  other  professors  (who 
were  my  thorough  friends)  aided  and  encouraged  me 
in  every  way  and  clearly  took  it  for  granted  that  I 
would  encounter  no  hardship  in  entering  the  aca¬ 
demic  profession  as  a  teacher  of  the  English  language 
and  literature.  My  father  and  mother  were  also  well 
content  with  my  plan;  their  German  respect  for  the 
dignity  and  authority  of  the  academic  life  increased 
their  satisfaction. 

I  can  say  frankly — since  my  present  self  is  so  far 
removed  from  that  old,  boyish  self  in  Queenshaven 
with  its  deep  faith  and  ardor — that  I  prepared  myself 
for  my  chosen  calling  in  no  common  way.  I  read  Eng¬ 
lish  literature  with  a  white  heat  of  passion ;  the  lamp 
in  my  bed-room  burned  dry  night  after  night.  By 
the  time  I  was  nineteen  I  had  read  and  re-read  and 
pondered  all  the  great  things  in  English  literature 

[92] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


from  Chaucer  to  Kipling,  and  I  had  read  many  authors 
of  the  second  and  third  rank — J onson  and  Donne,  Mar¬ 
vell  and  Crashaw,  Herrick  and  Vaughan,  Prior  and 
Gay  and  Tickell,  Collins  and  Smart,  Crabbe  and  Cow- 
per  and  Hogg,  even  Bowles  and  Lloyd,  Patmore  and 
Frederick  Tennyson,  Clough  and  Beddoes  and  Locker- 
Lampson  down  to  Lang  and  Austin  Dobson  and,  of 
course,  the  immediate  contemporaries.  Yet  these 
names  are  but  a  few  and  written  down  at  random.  The 
works  of  the  great  poets,  even  of  those  who  like  Lan- 
dor  are  aside  from  the  beaten  road,  had  entered  into 
my  very  being.  ...  I  have  had  little  time  to  read 
English  poetry  of  late  years.  I  do  not  need  to.  I 
dip  into  my  memory  and  those  immortal  numbers 
sound  upon  my  inner  ear!  The  early  books  and  the 
seventh  of  Paradise  Lost,  the  Epistle  to  Augustus, 
Adonais  and  the  Nightingale  Ode,  Kubla  Khan  and 
Work  Without  Hope,  Tintern  Abbey  and  the  Ode  and 
the  Sonnets,  The  Lotos-Eaters  and  Ulysses,  The  Last 
Ride  Together  and  A  Grammarian’s  Funeral,  Thyrsis 
and  The  Scholar  Gypsy,  The  Blessed  Damozel  and 
Jenny,  A  Forsaken  Garden  and  the  elegy  on  Baude- 
laire  and  the  long,  dreamy,  murmuring  melodies — like 
the  wash  of  a  summer  sea — of  The  Earthly  Paradise. 
.  .  .  In  prose  I  was  not  so  well  grounded.  But  I  knew 
the  greater  prosemen  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries,  especially  my  old  favorites  Swift  and  John¬ 
son,  and  the  object  of  my  latest  and  deepest  enthusiasm 
in  college,  Matthew  Arnold,  reasonably  well  and  the 
novelists  from  Fielding  to  George  Eliot  intimately. 
And  I  had  read  all  the  histories  of  English  literature 
available  and  dozens  of  volumes  of  critical  essays  and 
most  of  the  chief  biographies  from  Boswell  to  Lord 

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Tennyson’s  life  of  his  father.  Once,  when  my  eyes 
were  being  treated,  my  mother  read  to  me  the  whole 
of  Dowden’s  Shelley  and  of  Trevelyan’s  Macaulay. . .  * 
I  have  mentioned  Matthew  Arnold.  My  father  dis¬ 
covered  the  volume  containing  Culture  and  Anarchy 
and  Friendship’s  Garland  and  urged  me  to  read  it.  I 
felt  the  impact  of  a  kindred  mind  and  the  book  became 
one  of  my  deepest  experiences,  although  its  full  import 
was  revealed  to  me  only  years  later.  I  read  all  of 
Arnold  over  and  over  again  and  I  still  think  him  the 
clearest-souled  Englishman  of  his  century.  And  finally 
there  came — as  was  inevitable — Pater  and  Stevenson 
as  the  last  word  in  that  other  great  art  of  prose  which 
I  now  took  almost  as  seriously  as  the  greater  art  of 
verse.  I  took  delight  in  the  tales  of  Stevenson.  But  it 
was  characteristic  of  my  youth  and  its  environment 
that  his  essays  seemed  to  me  not  only  charmingly 
written — (they  are,  though  with  too  obvious  a  display 
of  dexterity) — hut  wonderfully  rich  in  wisdom.  .  .  .  Re¬ 
cently,  at  odd  moments  of  leisure,  I  have  been  reading 
Hazlitt  again.  Almost  more  than  any  other  English 
writer  he  gives,  in  a  voice  so  little  muffled  by  the  grave 
as  almost  to  ring  in  one’s  ears,  the  deep  sense  of  the 
texture  and  savor,  the  stir  and  pang  of  life.  Regret 
and  longing,  the  glory  and  the  disillusion — what  poet 
has  rendered  them  with  a  more  piercing  note?  Withal 
his  voice  is  always  manly,  direct,  tempered  by  some 
tonic  quality  within.  In  my  college  days  I  preferred 
Stevenson.  I  did  not  see  that  Stevenson  paints  life 
and  feeling  in  but  a  few  colors.  These  are  bright  and 
very  engaging  and  delicately  used.  But  they  fill  in  a 
pattern  quite  arbitrary  and  unreal.  The  sentiments 

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THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


and  ideals  correspond  to  no  well-considered  vision  of 
the  world.  They  are  like  the  pipings  of  some  splendid 
bird  in  a  world  all  dawn — a  world  that  will  never  know 
the  heat  of  noon  with  its  ardor  of  passion  and  pain  or 
the  dark  of  night  with  its  contemplation  and  its  falter¬ 
ing  hope.  .  .  . 

Meanwhile  I  read  both  verse  and  prose,  not  yielding 
blindly  to  the  easy  and  abundant  inspiration  of  youth, 
but  curbing  that  inspiration  and  guiding  it  with  severe 
and  fastidious  care.  The  uncriticalness  of  Southern 
culture  confirmed  me  in  demanding  the  utmost  ex¬ 
actions  of  myself.  There  was  a  terrible  lot  of  facile 
and  amorphous  talking  and  writing.  An  eighteenth- 
centuryish  type  of  oratory  still  throve  in  Queenshaven. 
Whenever  its  echo  reached  me  I  re-read  Gautier’s 
stanzas  on  art  and  tightened  the  girdle  about  my  loins. 

I  have  recentlv  looked  at  some  thousands  of  manu- 
script  verses  of  that  period.  The  poems  are  full  of  a 
rhythmic  ardor,  yet  never  without  restraint.  There 
are  good  lines  and  happy  turns  of  expression  and  there 
is  no  lack  of  imagination.  Yet  the  stuff  is  quite  worth¬ 
less.  For  it  is  merely,  as  Arthur  Symons  wrote  me 
years  later  (not  of  my  own  work)  “poetizing  about 
the  old  subjects  in  as  nearly  as  possible  the  old  way.” 
There  is  no  directness  of  speech  because  there  was, 
after  all,  no  directness  of  vision.  It  is  all  remote  and 
unreal.  Mere  “literature”  in  the  sense  of  Verlaine. 
Without  the  learned  renaissance  tradition  of  English 
poetry  from  Surrey  to  Swinburne  the  verses  were  un¬ 
thinkable.  With  that  tradition  and  its  results  extant 
they  were  superfluous.  But  they  illustrate  how  I  lived 
and  moved  and  had  my  being  in  the  cultural  tradition 

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of  the  Anglo-Saxon  aristocrat.  I  was  of  those  who 
“  speak  the  tongue  that  Shakespeare  spoke,  the  faith 
and  morals  hold  that  Milton  held”  .  .  . 


v. 


Does  all  that  sound  priggish?  It  was  saved  from 
priggishness,  I  believe,  by  its  passion,  by  its  inevitable¬ 
ness.  There  was  no  blemish  of  worldly  ambition  in  it 
all.  I  thirsted  to  know,  I  hungered  to  create.  But  I 
had,  all  during  my  sophomore  and  junior  years,  an¬ 
other  preoccupation,  a  humbler  and,  perhaps,  a  more 
human  one.  There  was  a  girl  ...  I  saw  her  one  day 
at  Sunday  School.  I  met  her  that  week  at  the  Epworth 
League.  Straightway  something  within  me  began  to 
ache  with  a  very  definite,  small,  sharp,  insistent  ache. 
For  two  years  I  had  to  study  very  hard  or  write  very 
feverishly  to  deaden  that  pain.  Reason  and  self-per- 
suasion  were  quite  powerless  against  it.  Love  at  first 
sight:  a  very  powerful  instinct  of  sexual  selection. 
Each  phrase  expresses  half  of  the  intense  reality.  The 
girl  was  short  and  rather  plump,  she  had  a  skin  of  fine 
texture,  small,  white,  mouse-like  teeth,  pale,  brown 
hair,  good  eyes  of  grey  with  long  lashes,  but  a  small, 
prim,  cool  mouth.  She  wasn’t  pretty.  Heaven  knows 
she  wasn’t  clever.  Her  mother  and  her  older  sister 
illustrated  with  deadly  precision  what  she  was  certain 
to  become.  And  I  saw  all  this  and  nursed  no  illusions 
and  yet  a  smile  from  her  would  ease  me  for  a  day  and 
failure  to  see  her  would  throw  me  into  helpless  agony. 
I  was  intensely  jealous  of  her,  though  I  knew  her  to  be 
quite  innocent,  not  even  given  to  flirting,  and  though 
she  was  obviously  anxious  to  give  me  every  encourage- 

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THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


ment  permitted  by  a  very  strict  maidenly  propriety. 
What  was  that  chilly  preference  to  my  fever  and  my 
pain!  This  experience  aroused  in  me,  even  in  the  midst 
of  my  suffering,  my  earliest  reflections — vague  and  in¬ 
conclusive  and  rendered  futile,  of  course,  by  my  gentle¬ 
manly  conservatism — on  a  tremendous  problem.  If  by 
any  queer  and  unthinkable  chance  I  could  have  married 
the  girl,  I  would  have  done  so — young  and  penniless 
and  helpless  as  I  was.  The  knowledge  that  such  a  step 
would  have  ruined  me  would  not  have  deterred  me  for 
a  moment.  I  wanted  her  so!  It  was  a  good  thing, 
then,  that  society  and  custom  and  parental  authority 
made  such  a  step  impossible.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
seemed  a  raw  cruelty  that  the  passion  of  love  at  its 
freshest  and  most  vigorous  should  be  a  festering  spear 
in  the  flesh  of  youth.  What  a  problem !  WTiat  a  world ! 
.  .  .  At  the  end  of  the  second  year  I  succeeded,  by  the 
severest  self-discipline,  in  freeing  myself  measurably 
from  this  torment.  I  deliberately  went  out  a  good  deal 
with  a  vivid  little  beauty  in  whom  a  quiver  of  passion 
constantly  fought  against  but  never  overcame  reserve 
and  principle.  She  was  worth  a  dozen  of  the  other 
kind.  Yet  until  I  left  college  I  had  to  avoid  that  fatal 
girl  with  the  round  shoulders  and  the  dreary  mouth 
lest  I  should  feel  again  the  old,  miserable,  sickening 
ache.  I  marvel  how  with  that  scourge  upon  me  I 
could  work  so  very  intensely  and  continuously.  But, 
though  I  had  next  to  no  worldly  ambition,  I  was 
anxious  to  get  through  college. 

I  had  a  deep  and  urgent  motive.  I  began  to  see  how 
the  Queenshaven  life  was  gradually  telling  on  my 
father  and  mother.  To  my  love  of  them  was  added  a 
compassion  that  shook  me  to  the  roots  of  my  being  and 

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a  deadly  fear  that  in  my  race  against  time  and  circum¬ 
stance,  my  race  for  their  welfare  and  their  future,  I 
might  arrive  too  late.  I  began  to  perceive  objectively 
how  the  meanness  and  the  humiliations  of  my  father’s 
business  were  beginning  to  shake  his  judgment  and 
to  exasperate  his  moods ;  how  solitariness  and  repres¬ 
sion  were  whitening  my  mother’s  hair.  Her  face  re¬ 
tained  its  girlish  bloom  and  freshness  almost  to  the 
threshold  of  old  age.  She  had  hardly  a  wrinkle  when 
she  died.  But  during  my  years  at  college  her  hair 
turned  quite  white  and  my  old  terror  for  her  became 
intensified. 

But  I  must  not  give  the  impression  that  our  home 
life  was  altogether  gloomy.  After  all  we  had  one  an¬ 
other  and  there  were  many  cheerful  hours  and  days. 
We  were  poor  but  never  to  the  point  of  penury.  A  fine 
care  and  wise  frugality,  especially  characteristic  of 
my  mother,  made  the  modest  income  suffice  for  all  de¬ 
cent  necessities  and  my  studies  and  development  were 
not  interrupted  by  any  material  cares.  I  sometimes 
thought  our  diet  monotonous.  I  didn’t  always  like  my 
clothes.  But  essentially  my  indifference  to  such  things 
was  quite  serene.  My  father  and  mother,  moreover, 
were  full  of  hope.  My  progress  was  obvious;  my 
teachers  constantly  impressed  upon  them  the  belief 
that  I  had  an  enviable  future  before  me.  I  had,  too, 
an  excellent  friend  on  the  Queenshaven  Courier,  a 
clever  man,  almost  my  father’s  age,  who  reprinted  my 
verses  in  the  paper,  got  me  to  write  articles  and  book- 
reviews  and  so,  almost  insensibly,  I  became  quite  a 
figure  in  that  small,  compact  community.  .  .  .  How 
little  that  meant,  how  in  spite  of  fair  seeming  and  fair 

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THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


speech  all  forces  were  arrayed  against  me,  I  did  not 
know  until  several  years  had  passed.  .  .  . 

I  recall  a  moonlit,  starry  night  in  May.  My  father 
had  gone  to  a  lodge  meeting.  My  mother  and  I  paced 
the  piazza  together,  as  was  our  wont.  It  was  a  fe.w 
weeks  before  my  graduation.  We  spoke  long  and 
quietly  of  the  past  and  of  the  future — of  my  hopes 
which  seemed  well-justified,  of  the  important  day  that 
was  coming.  We  both  went  to  rest,  I  know,  with  a  real 
serenity  of  soul.  .  .  .  More  than  once  later  she  re¬ 
called  that  evening  to  me  and  asked  me  whether  I 
remembered  it.  Remember  it!  I  shall  see  those  stars 
and  the  shadows  on  the  verandah  and  her  eyes  in  the 
dusk  until  I  see  nothing  more  forever.  But  the  last 
time  she  asked  me  I  feigned  forgetfulness.  I  was  be¬ 
yond  all  speech.  For  the  hopes  had  gone  down  in 
shame  and  frustration  and  on  her  face  was  the  mark 
of  death.  .  .  . 

VI. 


My  graduation  was  made  a  notable  event  in  our 
small  circles.  All  the  leading  citizens  of  the  town  are 
alumni  of  the  college  and  are  proud  of  its  work  and 
its  traditions.  So  they  had  followed  my  writings  in  the 
magazine  and  in  the  papers,  and  when  I  took  two  de¬ 
grees  and  delivered  a  commencement  oration  which, 
for  once,  made  some  concessions  in  manner  to  the  more 
florid  type  of  Southern  oratory,  they  had  a  moment  of 
enthusiasm  over  me.  This  enthusiasm  was  shared  by 
the  press  of  Queenshaven  and  by  my  class-mates.  I 
was  a  bit  more  of  a  hero  than  the  youth  who  wins  a 
series  of  important  foot-ball  games  for  his  university. 
It  was  a  very  great  day  for  me  and  an  even  greater 

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day  for  my  parents :  the  happiest  they  had  known  in 
years,  the  happiest  they  were  ever  to  know  again. 
Under  the  influence  of  this  wave  of  communal  approba¬ 
tion  a  board  of  Episcopal  clergymen  elected  me  to  the 
chair  of  English  in  a  local  academy.  But  the  aged 
clergyman  to  whom  the  school  really  belonged  arose 
from  a  bed  of  illness  and  removed  the  trustees  he  had 
himself  appointed  for  electing  a  person  distasteful  to 
him.  He  used  this  expression  quite  openly  in  a  letter 
to  the  Courier.  The  gentlemen  on  the  board,  however, 
wrote  me  apologetic  letters  and  my  friends  and  parents 
agreed  that  it  wasn’t,  after  all,  my  ambition  to  teach 
in  a  denominational  school.  Besides,  I  was  only  just 
nineteen  and  the  world  seemed  all  before  me  where  to 
choose.  .  .  .  By  Ferris’  advice  I  registered  in  several 
teachers’  agencies  and  sent  my  master’s  thesis  to  a 
scholarly  journal  by  which  it  was  duly  accepted  for 
publication. 

The  long  summer  weeks  dragged  on  and  nothing 
happened.  One  New  England  teachers’  agency  did, 
indeed,  suggest  a  place  or  two  but  nothing  came  of  my 
applications.  Ferris  assured  me  by  letter  that  this 
lack  of  success  was  due  to  my  youth  and  inexperience. 
Since  he  had  councilled  me  from  the  first  to  apply  for 
a  fellowship  or  scholarship  in  one  of  the  large  grad¬ 
uate  schools  of  the  east,  I  accepted  his  explanation  for 
these  happenings  as  well  as  for  other  experiences  that 
came  when  I  applied  for  school  positions  within  the 
state.  His  advice  was  that  I  should  stay  at  home  for 
a  year,  pursue  my  studies  and  write  a  few  more  schol¬ 
arly  papers  to  submit  with  my  fellowship  applications 
the  following  spring.  My  father,  ever  the  soul  of  un¬ 
worldliness  in  money  matters,  agreed  heartily  to  this 

[100] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


plan  and  my  mother  was  glad  that  she  could  have  me 
with  her  for  another  year. 

That  year  stands  out  in  my  memory  as  a  pleasant 
one.  I  saw  little  of  any  one  except  Ferris,  but  I  was 
quite  free  to  devote  myself  to  the  cultivation  of  my 
tastes.  And  I  wrote  my  first  extensive  piece  of  work : 
an  essay  in  biography  and  criticism  about  fifty  thou¬ 
sands  words  in  length.  Ferris  pronounced  it  well- 
grounded  and  well-written — a  notable  piece  of  work 
for  a  mere  youth.  So  when  April  came  I  applied  for 
fellowships  at  Harvard  and  Columbia  and  both  Ferris 
and  I  were  hopeful  of  the  results.  From  both  univer¬ 
sities,  however,  I  received  only  pleasant  acknowledge¬ 
ments  of  the  work  I  had  sent  in  support  of  my  appli¬ 
cations,  an  invitation  to  pursue  my  graduate  studies 
and  regrets  that  neither  a  fellowship  nor  a  scholarship 
were  available.  This  was  a  hard  blow.  It  was  obvious 
that  I  could  not  go  on  living  on  my  father’s  kindness. 
On  the  contrary,  I  was  passionately  anxious  to  help 
him  and  my  mother  to  free  themselves  from  the  bonds 
of  their  Queenshaven  life.  I  did  not  speak  of  this,  for 
I  did  not  want  to  render  their  consciousness  of  it  more 
acute.  But  it  weighed  on  me  heavily.  I  thought  and 
thought  and  came  to  a  resolve  which  many  American 
youths  take  lightly  enough,  but  which  cost  me  infinite 
hesitation  and  pain :  I  would  borrow  money.  The  notion 
of  working  my  way  through  the  graduate  course  never 
occurred  to  me.  For  I  was  not  concerned  with  text¬ 
books  or,  primarily,  with  degrees,  but  with  a  life  to  be 
lived,  an  absorption  and  dedication  to  be  accomplished. 
And  this  never  presented  itself  to  my  mind  as  possible 
upon  any  terms  but  those  of  a  complete  release  from 
sordid  preoccupations. 


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Unhappily  for  me  the  wealthy  Jewish  physician  of 
my  Methodist  days  had  recently  died.  Had  he  been 
alive  my  way  would  have  been  easier.  I  felt  close  to 
him  and  he  was  kind  and  generous.  As  it  was,  I  had 
to  go  to  other  prominent  citizens  and  alumni  of  the 
college.  These  men  had  all  liked  me  and  made  much 
of  me  for  years;  I  felt  quite  at  home  with  them  in  all 
essential  matters  and  yet  it  was  a  terrible  struggle.  I 
put  off  my  errand  from  day  to  day ;  I  went  to  the  door 
of  some  office  and  hadn’t  the  courage  to  enter.  A  sen¬ 
sation  of  physical  nausea  and  of  burning  shame  over 
whelmed  me.  ...  I  have  never  been  able  to  feel  dif¬ 
ferently.  If  I  must  ask  for  something,  however  clear 
my  right  to  make  the  demand  or  the  request,  the  old, 
sickening  misery  comes  over  me  and  I  am  helpless, 
stupid,  stammering,  absurd.  For  the  sake  of  others 
I  have  had  to  ask  things  since  then.  For  myself  I 
would  never  have  the  strength  to  face  that  sense  of 
spiritual  nakedness  and  abasement.  Perhaps  it  is  from 
this  native  feeling  that  there  has  grown  my  passion  for 
justice.  The  more  just  we  are  to  our  fellowmen,  the 
less  need  we  wound  and  degrade  them  with  our 
wretched  mercy.  True  justice — I  do  not  mean  the 
tribal  terrors  or  capitalistic  voracities  of  our  legal  and 
moral  codes — true  justice  need  not  be  tempered  by 
mercy.  It  excludes  the  necessity  for  mercy.  You  do 
not  need  to  be  merciful  until  you  have  ceased  to  be 
just.  .  .! 

The  Queenshaven  gentlemen,  it  is  but  fair  to  add, 
made  my  dreadful  task  comparatively  easy.  Several 
of  them  met  to  discuss  the  matter  and  made  up  for  me 
a  loan  of  three  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  I  had  really 
wanted  six  hundred  to  see  me  through  the  year  at 

[102] 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ANGLO-AMERICAN 


Columbia,  since  the  tuition  alone  was  a  hundred  and 
fifty.  But  wild  horses,  in  the  vivid  old  phrase,  could 
have  dragged  no  further  begging  from  my  lips.  I 
thanked  them  with  what  grace  I  could  master  and 
proceeded  to  get  ready  for  my  great  adventure. 

Let  any  one  who  has  an  unclouded  vision  of  our 
American  life,  and  not  least  of  the  academic  part  of 
it,  consider  my  undertaking.  How  often  since  have  I 
reflected  on  it,  sometimes  in  a  mood  of  bitterness, 
sometimes  in  one  of  irony.  I  had  lived  utterly  for  the 
things  of  the  mind  and  the  emotions.  I  was  twenty 
years  old  and  knew  less  of  practical  matters  than  many 
a  child  of  ten.  I  had  no  social  adroitness  but  the  most 
quivering  sensitiveness  and  pride.  I  was  passionately 
Anglo-American  in  all  my  sympathies,  I  wanted  above 
all  things  to  be  a  poet  in  the  English  tongue,  and  my 
name  and  physiognomy  were  characteristically  Jewish. 
I  had  ill-cut,  provincial  clothes  and  just  money  enough 
to  get  through  one  semester.  Such  was  my  inner  and 
outer  equipment  for  pursuing  in  a  metropolitan  grad¬ 
uate  school  the  course  which  was  to  lead  to  a  college 
appointment  to  teach  English.  No  one  warned  me,  no 
one  discouraged  me.  It  seems  incredible  that  Ferris 
had  no  inkling  of  the  quality  of  my  undertaking.  But 
he,  too,  kept  silent.  So  I  faced  the  future  with  a  steady 
hopefulness.  Only  when  I  sought  to  grasp  what  sepa¬ 
ration  from  my  mother  would  mean  to  her  and  me  did 
my  heart  sink.  We  tried  to  comfort  each  other,  she 
and  I,  by  dwelling  upon  the  certainty  of  a  successful 
career  for  myself.  But  during  the  last  days  we  gave 
up  these  feeble  and  hollow  efforts  and  fell  quite  silent 
before  our  unavertible  fate. 


[103] 


CHAPTER  V. 


The  American  Discovers  Exile. 


i. 

In  those  days  the  steamers  from  the  South  landed 
at  piers  on  the  North  River.  I  was  too  deeply  pre¬ 
occupied  with  that  first,  tremendous,  lonely  plunge  into 
the  world  to  watch  the  harbor  or  the  sky-line  of  New 
York.  I  stood  on  deck,  grasping  my  valise  tightly, 
holding  my  hat.  The  sharp  wind  was  full  of  scurries 
of  rain.  It  was  almost  dark  when  we  passengers 
trickled  across  the  plank  into  the  appalling  mud  of 
the  streets.  The  lower  West  side  is,  I  still  think,  the 
dismallest  port  of  the  city.  On  that  day,  coming  from 
the  bland  and  familiar  South  and  from  a  life  that 
touched  reality  so  feebly,  it  seemed  brutal,  ferocious, 
stark.  .  .  .  An  indifferent  acquaintance  met  me  and 
hustled  me  to  the  nearest  station  of  the  Ninth  Avenue 
“L.”  We  climbed  the  iron  staircase,  scrambled  for 
tickets  and  were  jammed  into  a  car.  It  was  the  evening 
rush  hour  and  we  had  barely  standing  room.  The 
train  rattled  on  its  way  to  Harlem.  At  One  Hundred 
and  Sixteenth  Street  we  slid  down  in  the  elevator  to 
the  street,  frantically  dodged  people  and  vehicles 
across  Eighth  Avenue,  turned  south  and  west  and 
stood  presently  before  one  of  a  row  of  three  story 

[104] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 


houses  wedged  in  between  huge,  dark  buildings.  My 
guide  introduced  me  to  the  boarding-house  keeper,  a 
hard-featured,  heavily  rouged  woman  who  seemed  in 
pain  and  in  a  hurry.  They  led  me  to  a  hall  bedroom 
on  the  third  floor,  lit  a  whirring  gas-jet  and,  in  another 
minute,  were  gone.  I  put  down  my  valise  and  took  off 
my  overcoat  and  stood  still,  quite  still,  between  the 
bed  and  the  chiffonier.  I  could  touch  one  with  either 
hand.  I  was  in  New  York.  I  was  alone. 

At  such  moments  one’s  intentions  to  conquer  the 
world  avail  little.  Especially  if  one  is  twenty.  I  heard 
the  far  away  roar  of  New  York  like  the  roar  of  a  sin¬ 
ister  and  soulless  machine  that  drags  men  in  and 
crunches  them  between  its  implacable  wheels.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  I  would  never  be  able  to  face  it.  I 
huddled  in  that  small,  cold  room  in  an  old  traveling 
robe  of  my;  father’s  and  bit  my  lips.  But  I  had  the 
manhood  not  to  write  home  in  that  mood.  Indeed  my 
old  stoicism  had  not  deserted  me  and  my  parents  never 
learned  of  the  grinding  misery  of  my  first  weeks  in 
New  York. 

In  the  morning  the  October  sun  shone.  At  breakfast 
the  landlady  seemed  not  nearly  so  menacing.  I  may 
add  at  once  that  she  was  an  intelligent  and  courageous 
woman  who  had  suffered  much  and  undeservedly 
and  that  we  became  great  friends.  She  gave  me  on 
that  first  day  what  simple  directions  I  needed.  I  left 
the  house,  walked  to  the  corner  and  turned  my  face 
toward  the  west.  Morningside  Heights  with  its  many 
poplars  rose  sheer  against  a  sparkling  autumn  sky. 
The  beauty  of  it  seemed  much  colder  to  me  that  day 
than  it  does  now.  But  it  was  beauty — something  to 
dwell  with,  to  calm  and  to  console  the  mind.  I  took 

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heart  at  once  and  climbed  the  heights  and  presently 
came  upon  the  approach  to  the  University  library. 
The  river  shone  still  farther  to  the  west,  with  the 
russet  palisades  beyond.  But  I  hastened  across  the 
quadrangle,  eager  for  some  human  contact  in  this  new 
world  full  of  cold  power  and  forbidding  brilliance. 

Professor  Brent  of  the  department  of  English,  with 
whom  I  had  had  some  correspondence,  received  me 
with  a  winning  kindliness.  We  had  a  talk  the  other 
day  and  I  observed  him  and  remembered  the  old  days. 
He  has  grown  grayer.  Otherwise  he  is  the  same — the 
lank,  unathletic  but  not  graceless  form,  the  oblong  head 
lengthened  by  a  pointed  beard,  the  pleasant,  humorous 
but  powerful  glance,  the  easy  pose,  tilted  back  in  his 
chair,  the  eternal  cigarette  between  his  long,  bony, 
sensitive  fingers.  A  scholarly  and  poetic  figure, 
languid  enough,  but  capable  of  a  steady  tenacity  at  the 
urge  of  some  noble  passion  of  the  mind.  That  he  was 
a  trenchant  and  intrepid  thinker  I  always  knew.  How 
magnificently  he  would  stand  the  ultimate  intellectual 
test  of  this,  or  perhaps,  any  age,  I  was  to  learn  much 
later.  .  .  .  He  introduced  me  to  Brewer,  secretary  of 
the  department,  a  pale,  hesitant,  chill-eyed  Hew  Eng¬ 
lander  with  a  thin  strain  of  rhetorical  skill  and  literary 
taste. 

German  was  to  be  my  second  “minor”,  largely  be¬ 
cause  it  would  be  easy  and  would  give  me  more  time 
for  my  English  studies.  And  so  I  went  to  present 
myself  to  Professor  Richard  who  had  also  written 
me  a  pleasant  letter.  I  found  him  tall,  erect,  frugal 
and  incisive  of  speech,  a  spirit  of  great  rectitude,  of  a 
purity  almost  too  intense  to  grasp  the  concrete  forces 
and  passions  of  the  fevered  world;  clear,  high-souled, 

[106] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 


a  little  passionless,  but  all  that  without  effort  or  prig- 
ishness.  His  intellectual  and  artistic  sympathies  were, 
of  course,  limited.  But  within  its  limits  his  was  an 
admirable  and  a  manly  mind. 

The  qualities  of  Brent  and  Richard  did  not,  of 
course,  reveal  themselves  to  me  at  once.  Nor,  indeed, 
for  long  thereafter  and  then  in  private  interviews  and 
at  club-meetings.  The  lectures  of  these  excellent  pro¬ 
fessors  were  dull  and  dispiriting  to  me.  I  found  in 
them  no  living  sustenance  of  any  sort.  For  years  I 
sought  to  grasp  the  reasons  for  this  fact.  I  do  not 
think  I  grasped  them  wholly  until  I  myself  began  to 
lecture  to  graduate  students  and  to  have  such  students 
in  my  own  seminar.  I  came  to  the  university  with  the 
reading  I  have  described.  I  knew  all  the  books  that 
one  was  required  to  know  in  the  various  lecture 
courses.  What  I  wanted  was  ideas,  interpretative, 
critical,  aesthetic,  philosophical,  with  which  to  vivify, 
to  organize,  to  deepen  my  knowledge,  on  which  to  nour¬ 
ish  and  develop  my  intellectual  self.  And  my  friends, 
the  professors,  ladled  out  information.  Poor  men,  how 
could  they  help  it?  I  thought  in  those  days  that  all 
graduate  students  knew  what  I  and  a  small  group  of 
my  friends  knew.  I  am  aware  now  of  the  literally  in¬ 
credible  ignorance  of  the  average  bachelors  of  our 
colleges.  ...  I  cannot,  of  course,  absolve  the  profes¬ 
sors  entirely,  though  only  the  rigorous  veracity  that 
gives  its  meaning  to  this  narrative  can  force  me  to 
admit  even  so  much  of  friends  who  have  stood  by  me 
so  long  and  so  wholeheartedly  as  Brent  and  Richard. 
They  did  not  give  themselves  enough,  nor  freely 
enough.  They  did  not  realize  that,  the  elementary 
tools  of  knowledge  once  gained,  there  is  but  one  thing 

[107] 


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that  can  teach  men  and  that  is  the  play  of  a  large  and 
an  incisive  personality.  In  a  word,  I  was  an  ardent 
disciple  and  I  found  no  master.  So  I  drifted  and  occa¬ 
sionally  “cut”  lectures  and  wrote  my  reports  and 
passed  creditable  examinations  without  doing  a  page 
of  the  required  reading.  I  had  done  it  all !  I  read  for 
myself  in  entirely  new  directions — books  that  changed 
the  whole  tenor  of  my  inner  life — and  struggled  to 
make  a  living  and  wrote  verses  and  walked  and  talked 
and  sat  in  bar-rooms  and  cheap  eating-houses  with  my 
friend  Ellard — my  friend  of  friends,  whom  I  found 
at  this  time  and  who  is  still  animae  dimidium  meae. 


n. 


It  was  a  grey,  windy  November  forenoon  that  we 
first  talked  on  the  steps  of  Fayerwether  Hall.  He  was 
tall  and  lank  and  thin  to  emaciation.  An  almost 
ragged  overcoat  fluttered  behind  him,  a  shapeless,  dis¬ 
colored  hat  tilted  a  little  on  his  head.  His  delicate 
nostrils  seemed  always  about  to  quiver,  his  lips  to  be 
set  in  a  half-petulant,  half-scornful  determination. 
From  under  the  hat  shone  two  of  the  most  eloquent 
eyes — fiery  and  penetrating,  gloomy  and  full  of 
laughter  in  turn — that  were  ever  set  in  a  human  head. 
He  spoke  with  large,  loose,  expressive  gestures  and 
with  a  strange,  abrupt  way  of  ending  his  sentences. 
I  felt  drawn  to  him  at  once.  Freedom  and  nobility 
seemed  to  clothe  him  and  a  stoic  wildness.  A  young 
eagle  with  plumage  ruffled  by  the  storm.  .  .  .  !  I 
asked  him,  I  don’t  know  why,  whether  he  wrote  verse. 
And  when  he  said  that  he  did  I  knew  instinctively  that 
his  verses  were  better  than  mine,  far  better,  and  curi- 

[108] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 


ously  enough  I  was  not  sorry  but  glad  and,  in  a  way, 
elated.  I  cannot  tell  at  this  distance  of  time  how  rap¬ 
idly  our  friendship  ripened,  but  I  know  that  we  soon 
saw  a  great  deal  of  each  other. 

He  lived  in  a  small,  crowded  room  up  four  flights  of 
stairs.  A  large  kerosene  lamp  stood  on  his  study 
table.  A  sharp,  triangular  shadow  lay  steadily  across 
bed  and  wall.  He  was  tormented  by  poverty  and  love 
and  by  the  intellectual  bleakness  that  was  all  about  us. 
For  two  years  he  had  been  at  Bonn  and  though  by 
blood  a  New  England  Brahmin  of  the  purest  strain, 
the  sunny  comradeship  and  spiritual  freedom  of  the 
Rhineland  city  had  entered  into  his  very  being.  I  see 
him  standing  there  in  the  blue  cloud  of  our  cigarette- 
smoke  chanting  me  his  verses.  I  had  never  met  a  poet 
before  and  poetry  meant  everything  to  me  in  those 
days.  A  lovely  or  a  noble  line,  a  sonorous  or  a  troub¬ 
ling  turn  of  rhythm  could  enchant  me  for  days.  So 
that  I  was  wholly  carried  away  by  my  friend  and  his 
poems.  And  we  both  felt  ourselves  to  be  in  some  sort 
exiles  and  wandered  the  streets  as  the  fall  deepened 
into  winter,  engaged  in  infinite  talk.  We  watched  as 
evening  came  the  bursting  of  the  fiery  blooms  of  light 
over  the  city  and  again,  late  at  night,  met  in  some  eat¬ 
ing  house  or  bar-room  on  Amsterdam  Avenue  where 
the  belated,  frozen  car  men  watched  us  with  heavy  curi¬ 
osity.  We  found  ourselves  then,  as  we  have  found 
ourselves  ever  since,  in  complete  harmony  as  to  the 
deeper  things  in  life.  That  that  harmony  has  become, 
if  anything,  more  entire  during  the  past  seven  crucial 
years  of  the  world’s  history,  I  account  as  one  of  the 
few  sustaining  factors  in  my  life  and  to  it  I  attach,  not 
foolishly  I  think,  an  almost  mystical  significance.  .  .  . 

[109] 


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I  have  been  re-reading  his  poetry.  I  can  detach  it 
quite  coldly  now  from  the  romance  of  our  early  com- 
madeship,  from  the  comforts  of  our  maturer  friend¬ 
ship.  Nor  am  I  as  easily  stirred  as  I  was  once.  It  is 
inferior  to  no  poetry  that  has  been  written  on  this 
continent.  At  its  best  it  is  at  least  equal  to  the  noblest 
passages  of  Emerson  and  it  is  far  less  fragmentary, 
far  more  sustained  upon  an  extraordinary  level  of  in¬ 
tellectual  incisiveness,  moral  freedom  and  untradi- 
tional  beauty.  And  there  are  many  lines  and  passages 
that  in  their  imagination  and  passion  and  wisdom 
cleave  so  deeply  to  the  tragic  core  of  life  that  they 
might  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  grave  and  disillusioned 
men.  .  .  .  What  has  it  availed  him?  His  volumes 
scarcely  sell;  the  manuscript  of  his  third  one  is  being 
hawked  about  from  publisher  to  publisher.  His  verse 
is  handicapped  by  its  intellectual  severity  and  its  dis¬ 
dain  of  fashion — the  poetic  fashion  of  either  yesterday 
or  to-day.  But  it  has  the  accent  of  greatness  and  that 
is  bound  to  tell  in  the  long  run. 

Other  friendships  there  were  for  me  at  the  univer¬ 
sity,  pleasant  enough  at  that  time,  but  all  impermanent 
save  one  more.  I  still  count  George  Fredericks,  sober- 
minded,  virile,  generous,  among  my  chosen  comrades. 
And  I  still  think,  with  much  kindness,  of  G.  now  a  col¬ 
lege  professor  in  the  East,  a  fine,  pure  spirit,  a  New 
Englander  like  Ellard,  but  unlike  him  striving  quite  in 
vain  to  transcend  the  moral  and  intellectual  parochial¬ 
ism  of  his  section  and  his  blood.  But,  indeed,  I  sought 
no  companionship,  taking  only  such  as  came  my  way. 
For  mean  anxieties  soon  beset  me  as  my  slender  bor¬ 
rowings  came  to  an  end  and  I  tramped  the  streets  in 
search  of  tutoring.  A  crowd  of  queer  and  colorful  and 

[110] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 


comic  scenes — sorrowful  and  humiliating  enough  at 
that  time — floats  into  my  mind.  In  a  gorgeous  palace 
near  Central  Park  the  footman  eyed  me  contemptu¬ 
ously  and  an  elderly  woman  tried  to  hire  me  to  con¬ 
duct  her  evidently  rowdy  boys  to  and  from  school.  I 
refused  curtly  to  do  a  nurse-maid’s  work.  But  walking 
across  the  rich  carpet  to  the  door  I  heard  my  torn 
shoes  make  a  squdgy  sound  and  almost  repented.  In 
another  elaborate  establishment  I  gave,  in  a  very 
ready-made  Louis  XV  room  a  single  lesson  to  the 
young  daughter  of  the  house.  Next  day  a  note  came 
dispensing  with  my  services.  I  wasn’t  surprised.  The 
girl  was  pretty  and  I  was  hungry  for  charm  and  love 
and  she  had  evidently  not  disliked  me.  ...  At  last  I 
got  a  couple  of  boys  to  tutor  (one  a  deaf-mute)  and 
lessons  in  scientific  German  to  give  to  the  staff  of  one 
of  the  city  institutions.  Two  evenings  a  week  I  was 
ferried  across  Hellgate  in  the  icy  wind  to  give  this 
instruction.  It  was  a  bleak  and  tiresome  business,  but 
it  paid  room  and  board  and  tobacco  and  an  occasional 
glass  of  beer. 


in 

Meanwhile  I  read  the  nights  away.  Fascinating 
hints  had  come  to  me  in  Queenshaven,  despite  my 
whole-souled  absorption  in  English  literature,  of  cer¬ 
tain  modern  German  plays  and  poems  and  novels 
which  seemed,  by  all  reports,  to  differ  wonderfully 
from  both  Schiller  and  Heine,  the  two  German  poets 
whom  I  knew  best,  and  also  from  such  popular  mid¬ 
century  writers  as  Scheffel  and  Heyse.  But  very  few 
German  books  ever  made  their  way  to  Queenshaven. 

[Ill] 


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Here,  in  the  University  library,  I  found  them  all  and  I 
read  them  all. 

I  read  them  with  joy,  with  a  sense  of  liberation, 
with  a  feeling  that  no  other  books  in  the  world  had 
ever  given  me.  I  struggled  against  that  feeling;  I 
seemed  to  myself  almost  disloyal  to  the  modern  Eng¬ 
lish  masters,  to  the  very  speech  that  I  loved  and  which 
I  hoped  to  write  notably  some  day.  But  a  conviction 
came  upon  me  after  some  months  with  irresistible 
force.  All  or  nearly  all  English  books  since  Fielding 

were  literature.  This  was  life.  All  or  nearlv  all  the 

* 

English  literature  by  which  our  generation  lives  is, 
in  substance,  rigidly  bounded  within  certain  intellec¬ 
tual  and  ethical  categories.  This  was  freedom.  I  now 
understood  my  old,  instinctive  love  for  the  prosemen 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  They  had  the  sense  for  life 
— a  life  remote  from  ours,  to  be  sure — but  their  sense 
of  it  was  manly  and  incorruptible.  In  Wordsworth 
and  in  Tennyson  I  found  substantially  the  same  ele¬ 
vated  sentiments.  Except  in  the  narrow  field  of  the 
religious  emotions,  they  and  their  contemporaries  had 
no  sense  for  reality  at  all,  only  for  pseudo-nobility. 
And  in  English  fiction,  in  1904,  all  the  people  really 
held  the  same  elevated  sentiments,  sentiments  which 
were  mostly  false  and  unnecessary,  and  of  course 
couldn’t  and  didn’t  live  up  to  them.  They  were  all 
like  poor  Byron  who  half  believed  that  one  ought  to 
be  a  Christian  and  a  church-going  householder  and 
who  was  romantically  desperate  over  his  own  wicked 
nature.  Or  they  were  like  the  slim,  pale-eyed  son  of 
my  old  Sunday  school  superintendent.  The  lad  had 
an  excellent  tenor  voice  and  joined  a  small  opera  com¬ 
pany.  On  one  of  his  visits  home  he  said  to  me  with  a 

[112] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 

troubled  look  in  bis  eyes:  “I  don’t  see  why  I  should 
be  this  way.  My  father’s  such  a  good  man.”  ...  Of 
course  I’m  stating  the  case  crassly  and  unjustly  as  one 
always  does  and  must  for  the  sake  of  emphasis.  And, 
of  course,  I  shall  be  held,  whatever  I  say,  to  be  approv¬ 
ing  a  drifting  with  the  passions  of  human  life — like 
that  of  Burns — instead  of  an  understanding  and  use 
and  mastery  of  them.  But  it  will  not  be  denied  by  any 
really  honest  and  penetrating  thinker  that  English 
literature  from  Fielding  until  quite  recently  was  curi¬ 
ously  remote  from  life,  curiously  helpless  and  unhelp¬ 
ful  and  yet  arrogant  in  the  face  of  it.  Such  books  as 
Moore’s  Esther  Waters,  which  I  hadn’t  read,  and 
Wells’  The  Passionate  Friends,  which  hadn’t  yet  been 
written,  have  introduced  into  English  letters  an  en¬ 
tirely  new  element  of  spiritual  veracity  and  moral 
freedom.  And  these  were  the  qualities  which  I  found 
so  pervasively  and  overwhelmingly  present  (yet  with 
no  lack  of  beauty  and  music  in  structure  and  style) 
in  modern  German  literature.  If  in  these  books  there 
was  a  noble  sentiment  it  was  there  because  it  had 
grown  inevitably  from  the  sweat  and  tears,  the  yearn¬ 
ing  and  the  aspiration  of  our  mortal  fate — it  was  never 
set  down  because  it  was  a  correct  sentiment  to  which 
human  nature  must  be  made  to  conform.  I  understood 
very  fully  now  the  saying  of  that  character  in  one  of 
Henry  James’  stories:  “When  I  read  a  novel,  it’s 
usually  a  French  one.  You  get  so  much  more  life  for 
your  money.”  I  read  French  books,  too.  But  compared 
to  the  German  ones  they  seemed,  as  they  are,  rather 
hard  and  monotonous  and  lacking  in  spiritual  delicacy. 
.  .  .  Someone  gave  me  a  copy  of  Hans  Benzmann’s  an¬ 
thology  of  the  modern  German  lyric.  I  found  there  an 

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immediate  rendering  of  life  into  art,  not  mere  isolated 
elements  of  it  selected  according  to  a  tradition  of 
pseudo-nobility  and  then  fixed  in  the  forms  of  post- 
Renaissance  culture.  The  pangs  and  aspirations  of 
my  own  heart — and  of  all  hearts,  if  men  would  but  be 
honest  among  us — were  here,  the  haunting  echoes  of 
my  inner  life,  the  deep  things,  the  true  things  of  which 
I  had  been  ashamed  and  which  I  had  tried  to  transmute 
into  the  correct  sentiments  of  my  Anglo-American  en¬ 
vironment — I  found  them  all  in  the  lyrical  charm  of 
these  poets,  in  their  music,  which  is  the  very  music  of 
the  mind,  in  their  words,  which  are  the  very  words  of 
life.  They  spoke  my  thoughts,  they  felt  my  conflicts ; 
they  dared  to  be  themselves — these  modern  men  and 
women  who  were  impassioned  and  troubled  like  myself, 
who  had  not  snared  the  universe  in  barren  formulae, 
but  who  were  seekers  and  strivers !  They  didn’t  know 
the  whole  duty  of  man;  they  didn’t  try  to  huddle  out  of 
sight  the  eternal  things  that  make  us  what  we  are ;  they 
hadn’t  reduced  the  moral  and  spiritual  life  of  the  race 
to  a  series  of  gestures  of  more  than  Egyptian  rigidity. 
They  made  me  free ;  they  set  me  on  the  road  of  trying 
to  be  not  what  was  thought  correct  without  reference 
to  reality,  but  what  I  was  naturally  meant  to  be.  They 
taught  me,  not  directly,  but  by  the  luminous  implica¬ 
tions  of  their  works,  the  complete  spiritual  unveracity 
in  which  I  had  been  living  and  in  which  most  of  my 
Anglo-American  friends  seemed  to  be  living.  .  .  . 
This  whole  process  was,  of  course,  very  gradual  on  its 
practical  or  outer  side.  Within  me,  too,  the  old  ready¬ 
made  formulae  would  often  arise  to  inhibit  or  torment 
me.  And  from  this  conflict  and  turbidness  of  feeling 
and  vision  there  sprang  some  grave  errors  of  action. 

[114] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 

But  that  was  because  my  freedom  was  not  yet  a 
rational  freedom,  nor  one  corrected  by  a  power  of 
rational  experience.  My  youth  had  been  passed  amid 
so  much  falseness  that  my  mastery  of  fact  was  quite 
inadequate  for  the  practice  of  a  real  moral  freedom. 
I  had  no  way  at  all  of  seeing  things  as  they  really  are, 
no  power  of  measuring  the  origin  and  direction  of  the 
forces  that  rule  men  and  the  world.  I  was  like  some¬ 
one  to  whom  is  offered  the  freedom  of  a  great  library, 
but  who  had  been  deliberately  mistaught  the  meaning 
of  the  symbols  in  which  the  books  are  written.  I  knew 
that  it  was  my  duty  now  to  read  for  myself.  I  didn’t 
know  how  to  read.  I  am  struggling  to  express  a  diffi¬ 
cult  and  momentous  truth :  The  young  creators  of  new 
values  come  to  grief  so  often  not  because  their  values 
are  wrong,  nor  because  their  rebellion  is  not  of  the  very 
breath  of  the  world’s  better  life.  They  come  to  grief 
because  they  have  no  mastery  of  fact,  because  they 
carry  with  them  the  false  old  interpretations  and  con¬ 
ventional  idealizations  of  man,  and  nature,  and  human 
life.  .  .  .  Nevertheless  the  world  now  opened  itself  to 
me  in  a  new  guise.  I  had  been  accustomed,  as  I  had 
been  taught,  to  approve  and  to  disapprove.  Now  for 
the  first  time  I  watched  life  honestly  and  lost  myself 
in  it  and  became  part  of  it  with  my  soul  and  my  sympa¬ 
thies,  detached  only  in  the  citadel  of  the  analytic  and 
recording,  never  more  of  the  judging  mind.  I  became 
aware  of  faces— the  faces  of  people  on  the  streets,  in 
the  cars,  in  the  subway.  And  I  no  longer  thought  of 
people  as  good  and  bad  or  desirable  or  undesirable, 
but  I  saw  in  all  faces  the  struggle  and  the  passion  and 
the  sorrow,  sometimes  ugly,  unheroic  enough  always 

[115] 


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by  the  old,  foolish  tests,  but  full  of  endless  fascina¬ 
tion.  .  .  . 

To  a  modern  Continental,  French  or  German  or 
Italian,  this  whole  matter  will  seem  primitive  and 
absurd.  He  may  be  sure  that  I  am  touching  on  the 
central  weakness  of  the  Anglo-American  mind — its 
moral  illusionism.  That  mind  is  generally  quite 
sincere.  It  really  arranges  its  own  impulses  and  the 
impulses  of  other  men  in  a  rigid  hierarchy  of  fixed 
norms.  It  has  surrendered  the  right  and  the  power 
of  examining  the  contents  of  such  concepts  as  ‘  ‘  right,  ’ 9 
“wrong,”  “pure,”  “democracy,”  “liberty,”  “prog¬ 
ress,”  or  of  bringing  these  conventionalized  gestures 
of  the  mind  to  the  test  of  experience.  It  has  not,  in¬ 
deed,  ever  naively  experienced  anything.  For  it  holds 
the  examination  of  an  experience  in  itself,  and  with¬ 
out  reference  to  an  anterior  and  quite  rigid  norm  to  be 
a  “sin.”  It  hides  the  edges  of  the  sea  of  life  with  a 
board-walk  of  ethical  concepts  and  sits  there,  hoping 
that  no  one  will  hear  the  thunder  of  the  surf  of  human 
passions  on  the  rocks  below.  .  .  . 

IV 

A  face,  a  voice,  a  gesture  that  seemed  strange  and 
unheard  of  arose  before  me  and  I  was  stricken  by  a 
blind  and  morbid  passion.  All  the  repressions  of  my 
tormented  adolescence,  all  the  false  inhibitions  in 
thought  and  deed  now  went  toward  the  nourishing  of 
this  hectic  bloom.  It  was  winter.  A  white  and  silent 
winter.  Playing  with  curious  fancies  we  called  our 
passion  roses  in  the  snow.  I  committed  every  extrava¬ 
gance  and  every  folly.  I  knew  nothing  of  life,  nothing 

[116] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 


of  human  nature.  I  knew  ethical  formulae  which,  obvi¬ 
ously,  didn’t  apply — that  were,  at  best,  vicious  half- 
truths.  Thus  all  the  defences  of  my  soul  broke  down. 
I  had  never  been  taught  a  sane  self-direction.  The 
repetition  of  tribal  charms  which  were  quite  external 
had  been  deemed  a  sufficient  safeguard.  Happily, 
though  my  passion  was  morbid  enough  and  caused  me 
untold  suffering,  it  was  blended  with  the  love  of  letters 
and  with  a  keen  though  unwholesome  romance.  There 
was  nothing  in  it  of  baseness,  nothing  of  degradation. 
I  am  not  proud  of  it  but  I  am  not  ashamed  of  it.  I 
look  back  upon  it  and  it  blends,  in  strange  tones,  into 
the  inevitable  music  of  life — neither  good  nor  evil, 
neither  right  nor  wrong.  We  are  both  married  now 
and  meet  in  pleasant  friendship  and  remember  half- 
humorouslv  that  long  ago — so  long  ago,  it  seems  a 
fairy-tale — we  caused  each  other  delights  and  pangs 
and  tears.  .  .  . 

But  if  I  had  a  son  I  should  say  to  him:  “Dismiss 
from  your  mind  all  the  cant  you  hear  on  the  subject  of 
sex.  The  passion  of  love  is  the  central  passion  of 
human  life.  It  should  be  humanized;  it  should  be 
made  beautiful.  It  should  never  be  debased  by  a  sense 
that  it  is  in  itself  sinful,  for  that  is  to  make  the  whole 
of  life  sinful  and  to  corrupt  our  human  experience  at 
its  very  source.  Love  is  not  to  be  condemned  and  so 
degraded,  but  to  be  exercised  and  mastered.  If  you 
are  of  a  cool  temper  and  continence  leaves  your  mind 
serene  and  your  imagination  unbesmirched,  very  well. 
But  let  not  your  soul,  if  it  is  ardent,  become  contami¬ 
nated  and  disordered  by  false  shames  and  a  false 
sense  of  sin.  Love  in  itself  is  the  source  of  loveliness 
and  wisdom  if  it  is  gratified  without  falsehood  and 

[117] 


I 


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without  abandoning  the  sterner  elements  of  life.  Nat¬ 
ural  things  are  made  sinful  only  by  a  mistaken  notion 
that  they  are  so.  Account  love,  then,  as  inevitable  and 
lovely,  but  remain  master  of  your  soul  and  of  your¬ 
self  and  of  the  larger  purposes  which  you  were  born 
to  fulfill.” 

To  me,  as  to  every  American  youth,  it  had  been 
said:  1  ‘Passion,  except  within  marriage,  is  the  most 
degrading  of  sins.  Within  marriage  it  is  forgiven  but 
never  mentioned  as  being,  even  there,  unmentionable. 
This  is  the  law.”  Meantime  all  the  men  and  youths 
I  knew  slunk  into  the  dark  alleys  of  Queenshaven 
whither  I  did  not  follow  them.  And  curiously,  in  that 
very  act,  they  still  believed  the  follies  they  proclaimed. 
They  were  simply  moral  men  sinning  against  their 
own  convictions.  That  astonishing  ethical  dualism  of 
the  English  mind — (so  truly  and  so  moderately  set 
forth  by  George  Gissing  in  the  memorable  twentieth 
chapter  of  the  third  book  of  The  Private  Papers  of 
Henry  Ryecroft) — that  ethical  duality  of  conscience  I 
hold  the  chief  and  most  corrupting  danger  of  our  life 
as  a  people.  It  must  be  fought  without  ceasing  and 
without  mercy.  .  .  . 

Of  that  duality  there  was  nothing  in  my  being.  I 
was  bound  or  I  was  free.  But  having  been  a  slave  so 
long  I  ran  amuck  in  my  freedom  and  in  the  recoil  came 
almost  to  utter  grief.  I  was  saved  and  made  steadfast 
only  by  the  thought  of  those  two  watchers  in  the 
distant  South.  However  absorbed  in  that  most  pas¬ 
sionate  adventure,  I  never  missed  an  opportunity  of 
going  home  at  Christmas  or  even  at  Easter — planned 
for  it,  saved  for  it,  and  always  my  mother’s  hand  in 
mine  and  her  eyes  upon  me  made  me  well  again. 

[118] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 

Also  I  could  now  conquer  many  moods  and  free  my¬ 
self  from  them  by  fixing  them  in  art.  My  verse  was  no 
longer  the  echo  of  a  sonorous  tradition.  It  grew  no 
longer  out  of  the  love  of  poetry  but  out  of  the  pain  of 
life.  And  from  my  modern  Germans  as  well  as  from 
a  new  and  powerful  movement  in  our  English  verse  I 
learned  to  write  directly  and  truly.  Somehow,  in 
Queenshaven,  I  had  missed  a  poem  which  is  not,  of 
course,  the  greatest,  but  assuredly  the  most  important 
English  poem  of  the  third  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century:  Meredith’s  Modern  Love.  The  application 
of  English  poetic  art  to  the  actual,  the  contemporary 
and  the  real  had  there  been  inaugurated.  In  addition 
I  now  read  Henley  and  Housman’s  A  Shropshire  Lad 
and  The  Love  Sonnets  of  Proteus  and,  above  all,  I 
found  the  two-volume  edition  of  the  poems  of  Arthur 
Symons.  Granting  the  hostile  critic  his  monotony  of 
mood  (but  is  not  Shelley’s  mood  quite  as  monotonous 
in  a  different  spiritual  key?),  and  his  morbidness 
(though  what  is  morbidness,  after  all?)  and  there  re¬ 
mains  in  his  work  the  creation  of  a  new  style,  a  new 
method,  a  new  power.  The  conventional  taste  of  his 
generation  still  lags  behind  his  method,  but  in  it  is  one 
of  the  essential  forces  of  the  future  of  English  poetry. 

v 

The  various  experiences  which  I  have  set  down  so 
briefly  extended  over  two  years.  At  the  end  of  the  first 
year  I  duly  took  my  master’s  degree  and  applied  for 
a  fellowship.  Among  the  group  of  students  to  which  I 
belonged  it  was  taken  for  granted  that,  since  Ellard 
had  completed  his  studies  for  the  doctorate,  I  would 

[H9] 


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undoubtedly  be  chosen.  I  record  this,  heaven  knows, 
not  from  motives  of  vanity  but  as  part  of  the  subtler 
purpose  of  this  story.  The  faculty  elected  my  friend 
Gr.  I  went,  with  a  heavy  heart,  to  interview  Professor 
Brewer,  uot  to  push  my  claims  to  anything,  but  be¬ 
cause  I  was  at  my  wits’  end.  I  dreaded  another  year 
of  tutoring  and  of  living  wretchedly  from  hand  to 
mouth,  without  proper  clothes,  without  books.  Brewer 
leaned  back  in  his  chair,  pipe  in  hand,  with  a  cool  and 
kindly  smile.  “It  seemed  to  us,”  he  stuttered,  “that 
the  university  hadn’t  had  its  full  influence  on  you.” 
He  suggested  their  disappointment  in  me  and,  by  the 
subtlest  of  stresses,  their  sorrow  over  this  disappoint¬ 
ment.  I  said  that  I  had  been  struggling  for  a  liveli¬ 
hood  and  that,  nevertheless,  my  examinations  had  uni¬ 
formly  received  high  grades  and  my  papers,  quite  as 
uniformly,  the  public  approval  of  Brent  and  himself. 
He  avoided  a  direct  answer  by  explaining  that  the  de¬ 
partment  had  recommended  me  for  a  scholarship  for 
the  following  year.  The  truth  is,  I  think,  that  Brewer, 
excessively  mediocre  as  he  was,  had  a  very  keen  tribal 
instinct  of  the  self-protective  sort  and  felt  in  me — what 
I  was  hardly  yet  consciously — the  implacable  foe  of  the 
New  England  dominance  over  our  national  life.  I 
wasn’t  unaware  of  his  hostility,  but  I  had  no  way  of 
provoking  a  franker  explanation. 

I  forgot  my  troubles  in  three  beautiful  months  at 
home — three  months  seemed  so  long  then — or,  rather, 
I  crowded  these  troubles  from  my  field  of  conscious¬ 
ness.  I  wouldn’t  even  permit  the  fact  that  I  wasn’t 
elected  to  a  scholarship  to  depress  me.  Brewer  wrote 
a  letter  of  regret  and  encouragement  that  was  very 
kindly  in  tone.  The  pleasant  implication  of  that  letter 

[120] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 


was,  of  course-,  a  spiritual  falsehood  of  the  crassest. 
He  knew  then  precisely  what  he  knew  and  finally  told 
me  ten  months  later.  But  his  kind  has  a  dread  of  the 
bleak  weather  of  the  world  of  truth,  and  approaches  it 
gingerly,  gradually,  with  a  mincing  gait.  He,  poor 
man,  was  probably  unconscious  of  all  that.  In  him,  as 
in  all  like  him,  the  corruption  of  the  mental  life  is  such 
that  the  boundaries  between  the  true  and  the  false  are 
wholly  obliterated. 

In,  the  passionate  crises  of  the  second  year  I  often 
walked  as  in  a  dream.  And  I  was  encouraged  by  the 
fact  that  the  department  arranged  a  loan  for  my 
tuition.  In  truth,  I  was  deeply  touched  by  so  unusual 
a  kindness  and  I  feel  sure  that  the  suggestion  came 
from  Brent.  If  so,  Brewer  again  did  me  a  fatal  injury 
by  not  preventing  that  kindness.  For  he  had  then,  I 
must  emphasize,  the  knowledge  he  communicated  to  me 
later — the  knowledge  that  held  the  grim  upshot  of  my 
university  career. 

Spring  came  and  with  it  the  scramble  for  jobs 
among  the  second  year  men.  My  friends  were  called 
in  to  conferences  with  Brewer;  I  was  not.  They  dis¬ 
cussed  vacancies,  chances  here  and  there.  It  wasn’t 
the  chagrin  that  hurt  so;  it  wasn’t  any  fear  for  myself. 
After  all  I  was  only  twenty-two  and  I  was  careless  of 
material  things.  I  thought  of  my  father  and  my 
mother  in  the  cruel  sunshine  of  Queenshaven.  Their 
hope  and  dream  and  consolation  were  at  stake.  I 
could  see  them,  not  only  by  day,  but  in  the  evening, 
beside  their  solitary  lamps,  looking  up  from  their 
quiet  books,  thinking  of  me  and  of  the  future.  ...  I 
remembered  how  my  father  had  believed  in  certain 
implications  of  American  democracy.  I  remembered 

[121] 


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*  .  .  I  was  but  a  lad,  after  all.  I  couldn’t  face  Brew¬ 
er’s  cool  and  careless  smile.  I  wrote  him  a  letter — a 
letter  which,  in  its  very  earnestness  and  passionate 
Veracity  must  have  struck  like  a  discord  upon  the  care¬ 
ful  arrangements  of  his  safe  and  proper  nature.  For 
in  it  I  spoke  of  grave  things  gravely,  not  jestingly, 
as  one  should  to  be  a  New  England  gentleman:  I 
spoke  of  need  and  aspiration  and  justice.  His  answer 
lies  before  me  now  and  I  copy  that  astonishingly 
smooth  and  chilly  document  verbatim:  “It  is  very  sen¬ 
sible  of  you  to  look  so  carefully  into  your  plans  at  this 
juncture,  because  I  do  not  at  all  believe  in  the  wisdom 
of  your  scheme.  A  recent  experience  has  shown  me  how 
terribly  hard  it  is  for  a  man  of  Jewish  birth  to  get  a 
good  position.  I  had  always  suspected  that  it  was  a 
matter  worth  considering,  but  I  had  not  known  how 
wide-spread  and  strong  it  was.  While  we  shall  be  glad 
to  do  anything  we  can  for  you,  therefore,  I  cannot 
help  feeling  that  the  chances  are  going  to  be  greatly 
against  you.  ’  ’ 

I  sat  in  my  boarding-house  room  playing  with  this 
letter.  I  seemed  to  have  no  feeling  at  all  for  the  mo¬ 
ment.  By  the  light  of  a  sunbeam  that  fell  in  I  saw 
that  the  picture  of  my  parents  on  the  mantelpiece  was 
very  dusty.  I  got  up  and  wiped  the  dust  off  carefully. 
Gradually  an  eerie,  lost  feeling  came  over  me.  I  took 
my  hat  and  walked  out  and  up  Amsterdam  Avenue, 
farther  and  farther  to  High  Bridge  and  stood  on  the 
bridge  and  watched  the  swift,  tiny  tandems  on  the 
Speedway  below  and  the  skiffs  gliding  up  and  down 
the  Harlem  Elver.  A  numbness  held  my  soul  and 
mutely  I  watched  life,  like  a  dream  pageant,  float  by 
me.  ...  I  ate  nothing  till  evening  when  I  went  into 

[122] 


•  • 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 


a  bakery  and,  catching  sight  of  myself  in  a  mirror, 
noted  with  dull  objectivity  my  dark  hair,  my  melan¬ 
choly  eyes,  my  unmistakably  Semitic  nose.  .  .  .  An 
outcast.  ...  A  sentence  arose  in  my  mind  which  I 
have  remembered  and  used  ever  since.  So  long  as 
there  is  discrimination,  there  is  exile.  And  for  the 
first  time  in  my  life  my  heart  turned  with  grief  and 
remorse  to  the  thought  of  my  brethren  in  exile  all 
over  the  world.  .  .  . 

vi 

The  subconscious  self  has  a  tough  instinct  of  self- 
preservation.  It  thrusts  from  the  field  of  vision,  as 
Freud  has  shown,  the  painful  and  the  hostile  things  of 
life.  Thus  I  had  forgotten,  except  at  moments  of 
searching  reflection,  the  social  fate  of  my  father  and 
mother,  my  failure  to  be  elected  to  the  fraternity  at 
college,  and  other  subtler  hints  and  warnings.  I  had 
believed  the  assertion  and  made  it  myself  that  equality 
of  opportunity  was  implicit  in  the  very  spiritual  foun¬ 
dations  of  the  Republic.  This  is  what  I  wanted  to  be¬ 
lieve,  what  I  needed  to  believe  in  order  to  go  about  the 
business  of  my  life  at  all.  I  had  listened  with  a  correct 
American  scorn  to  stories  of  how  some  distant  kinsman 
in  Germany,  many  years  ago,  had  had  to  receive  Chris¬ 
tian  baptism  in  order  to  enter  the  consular  service  of 
his  country.  At  one  blow  now  all  these  delusions  were 
swept  away  and  the  facts  stood  out  in  the  sharp  light 
of  my  dismay.  Discrimination  there  was  everywhere. 
But  a  definite  and  public  discrimination  is,  at  least, 
an  enemy  in  the  open.  In  pre-war  Germany,  for  in¬ 
stance,  no  Jew  could  be  prevented  from  entering  the 
academic  profession.  Unless  he  was  very  brilliant  and 

[123] 


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productive  his  promotion  was  less  rapid  than  that  of 
his  Gentile  colleagues.  He  knew  that  and  reckoned 
with  it.  He  knew,  too,  for  instance,  that  he  could  not 
become  senior  professor  of  German  at  Berlin  (only- 
associate  professor  like  the  late  R.  M.  Meyer),  nor 
Kultusminister,  but  he  could  become  a  full  professor 
of  Latin  or  philosophy,  and,  of  course,  of  all  the 
sciences.  I  am  not  defending  these  restrictions  and  I 
think  the  argument  for  them — that  the  German  state 
was  based  upon  an  ethnic  homogeneity  which  corre¬ 
sponds  to  a  spiritual  oneness — quite  specious.  I  am 
contrasting  these  conditions  with  our  own.  We  boast 
our  equality  and  freedom  and  call  it  Americanism  and 
speak  of  other  countries  with  disdain.  And  so  one  is 
unwarned,  encouraged  and  flung  into  the  street.  With 
exquisite  courtesy,  I  admit.  And  the  consciousness  of 
that  personal  courtesy  soothes  the  minds  of  our  Gen¬ 
tile  friends.  ...  It  will  be  replied  that  there  are  a 
number  of  Jewish  scholars  in  American  colleges  and 
universities.  There  are.  The  older  men  got  in  because 
nativistic  anti-Semitism  was  not  nearly  as  strong 
twenty-five  years  ago' as  it  is  to-day.  Faint  remnants 
of  the  ideals  of  the  early  Republic  still  lingered  in 
American  life.  But  in  regard  to  the  younger  men  I 
dare  to  assert  that  in  each  case  they  were  appointed 
through  personal  friendship,  family  or  financial  pres¬ 
tige  or  some  other  abnormal  relenting  of  the  iron 
prejudice  which  is  the  rule.  But  that  prejudice  has 
not,  to  my  knowledge,  relented  in  a  single  instance  in 
regard  to  the  teaching  of  English.  So  that  our  guard¬ 
ianship  of  the  native  tongue  is  far  fiercer  than  it  is  in 
an,  after  all,  racially  homogeneous  state  like  Germany. 
Presidents,  deans  and  departmental  heads  deny  this 

[124] 


THE  AMERICAN  DISCOVERS  EXILE 


fact  or  gloss  it  over  in  public.  Among  themselves  it 
is  admitted  as  a  matter  of  course. 

I  have  not  touched  the  deeper  and  finer  issues, 
though  I  have  written  in  vain  if  they  are  not  clear. 
My  purest  energy  and  passion,  my  best  human  aspira¬ 
tions  had  been  dedicated  from  my  earliest  years  to  a 
given  end.  It  was  far  more  than  a  question  of  bread 
and  butter,  though  it  was  that  too.  I  didn’t  know  how 
to  go  on  living  a  reasonable  and  reasonably  harmon¬ 
ious  inner  life.  I  could  take  no  refuge  in  the  spirit  and 
traditions  of  my  own  people.  I  knew  little  of  them. 
My  psychical  life  was  Aryan  through  and  through. 
Slowly,  in  the  course  of  the  years,  I  have  discovered 
traits  in  me  which  I  sometimes  call  Jewish.  But  that 
interpretation  is  open  to  grave  doubt.  I  can,  in  reality, 
find  no  difference  between  my  own  inner  life  of 
thought  and  impulse  and  that  of  my  very  close  friends 
whether  American  or  German.  So  that  the  picture  of 
a  young  man  disappointed  because  he  can’t  get  the 
kind  of  a  job  he  wants,  doesn’t  exhaust,  barely  indeed 
touches  the  dilemma.  I  didn’t  know  what  to  do  with 
my  life  or  with  myself. 

In  this  matter  of  freedom  and  equality  and  demo¬ 
cratic  justice,  then,  I  found  in  my  Anglo-American 
world  precisely  that  same  strange  dualism  of  con¬ 
science  which  I  had  discovered  there  in  the  life  of  sex. 
The  Brewers  in  the  academic  world  do  truly  believe 
that  our  society  is  free  and  democratic.  When  they 
proclaim  that  belief  at  public  banquets  a  genuine  emo¬ 
tion  fills  their  hearts.  Just  as  a  genuine  emotion  filled 
the  hearts  of  my  Southern  friends  (who  used  Mulatto 
harlots)  when  in  the  interest  of  purity  and  the  home 

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they  refused  to  sanction  the  enactment  of  any  divorce 
law  in  their  native  state. 

I  do  not  wish  to  speak  bitterly  or  flippantly.  I  am 
approaching  the  analysis  of  thoughts  and  events  be¬ 
side  which  my  personal  fate  is  less  than  nothing.  And 
I  need  but  think  of  my  Queenshaven  youth  or  of  some 
passage  of  Milton  or  Arnold,  or  of  those  tried  friend¬ 
ships  that  are  so  large  a  part  of  the  unalterable  good 
of  life,  or  of  the  bright  hair  and  gray  English  eyes  of 
my  own  wife  to  know  that  I  can  never  speak  as  an 
enemy  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  But  unless  that  race 
abandons  its  duality  of  conscience,  unless  it  learns  to 
honor  and  practice  a  stricter  spiritual  veracity,  it  will 
either  destroy  civilization  through  disasters  yet  un¬ 
heard  of  or  sink  into  a  memory  and  into  the  shadow 
of  a  name. 


[126] 


CHAPTER  VI 


The  American  .  Finds  Refuge 

i 

In  my  confusion  of  mind  I  didn’t  revise  my  dis¬ 
sertation  and  left  the  university  without  my  doctor’s 
degree.  Brent  was  angry  at  this  and  I  remember  a 
scene  in  his  study.  He  strode  up  and  down  and  re¬ 
buked  me  with  a  sternness  that  showed  his  friendship 
toward  me.  I  sat  huddled  in  a  chair.  I  couldn’t  hear 
to  tell  him  what  was  going  on  within  me.  Whether  he 
guessed  it  or  not,  he  made  every  effort  to  find  me  some 
suitable  employment.  I  suspect  that  he  actually  walked 
the  glaring  streets  that  early  summer  from  office  to 
office.  He  got  me  a  sub-editorship  on  one  of  those  huge 
compilation  sets  which  people  seem  to  buy — queer 
kinds  of  people  that  one  never  meets — and,  one  hopes, 
read  with  profit.  And  this  employment  led,  in  the 
course  of  a  few  months,  to  a  position  on  the  editorial 
staff  of  Singleton,  Leaf  and  Company. 

In  the  meantime  I  went  home,  joylessly  for  the  first 
time.  The  glaring  fact  couldn’t  be  hidden.  I  hacj  no 
academic  position,  however  humble.  Here,  too,  *  the 
evil  unveracity  of  early  influences  crippled  my  Joul. 
It  was  generally  agreed  that  there  was  no  Anti-Sem¬ 
itism  in  America.  It  had  been  held  un- America^  to 

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assert  that  there  was.  ...  So  I  even  permitted  my 
father  to  suspect  that  I  had,  perhaps,  neglected  my 
studies.  I  said  that  I  preferred  the  career  of  letters. 
“But  this  is  hack-work/ ’  he  retorted.  “It’s  a  be¬ 
ginning,”  I  declared  lamely,  “I’m  only  twenty-two.” 
My  mother  felt  that  a  shadow  lay  subtly  between  us. 
It  seemed  to  me — foolishly,  I  know  now — that  I  could 
not  offer  her  the  affront  of  saying  that  I  was  doomed 
to  this  failure  because  I  was  her  child.  ...  A  special 
delivery  letter  came  recalling  me  to  New  York.  I 
didn’t  want  to  go,  I  wanted  to  beg  my  father  to  let  me 
stay  and  think  and  plan  some  other  future.  But  I  had 
grown  up  among  a  dumb  folk  who  hold  it  ill-bred  to 
have  a  troubled  heart;  I  had  tried  so  hard  to  be  like 
them,  for  the  love  of  their  art,  that  I  had  gained  no 
power  over  life  or  speech.  .  .  . 

Often  and  often,  in  subsequent  years,  when  I  was 
irked  by  the  unresponsiveness  of  students  or  tired  of 
lecturing,  the  thought  flashed  through  my  mind:  For 
all  that,  thank  Heaven,  it’s  not  Singleton,  Leaf  and 
Company.  I  can,  at  least,  see  the  sun  and  think  my 
own  thoughts.  And  there  arises  in  me  the  memory  of 
that  large,  scientifically  clean  building  filled  with  the 
hum  of  the  engine  that  drove  the  monotype  machine 
and  with  the  acrid  odor  of  fresh  print.  A  sharp  elec¬ 
tric  light  burned  over  my  desk  from  eight-thirty  to 
twelve-thirty  and  from  one-thirty  to  five-thirty,  and 
next  to  me  stood  all  day  a  long,  loose  fellow  whose 
small,  pointed  head  seemed  fairly  to  dangle  and 
tremble,  like  an  ugly  and  noxious  flower,  at  the  end  of 
his  scrawny  neck.  He  was  constantly  in  a  Uriah  Heep- 
ish  ecstasy  of  contortion  over  the  greatness  of  the  firm 
we  served  and  the  huge  increases  in  advertising  matter 

[128] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 

to  be  4 ‘ made  up”  for  its  magazines  month  by  month. 
This  man  and  his  green-eyed  leer — there  was  some¬ 
thing  coldly  lecherous  in  it — became  to  me  a  symbol 
of  my  degradation.  For  it  was  degradation.  Single- 
ton,  Leaf  and  Company  did  not  consciously  or  pur¬ 
posefully  publish  a  line  for  its  literary  or  scientific 
value.  The  stuff  was  accepted  or,  more  often,  ar¬ 
ranged  for  merely  that  it  might  sell.  It  did.  But  the 
business  had  no  more  to  do  with  literature  or  science 
(except  by  accident:  occasionally  good  work  will  sell), 
than  a  breakfast  food  factory.  The  firm  had  its  own 
special  ideals,  to  be  sure.  It  accepted  and  then  refused 
to  publish  Dreiser’s  first  great  book.  But  except  for 
this  gentlemanly  avoidance  of  sex  in  literature,  it  had 
no  prejudices.  It  published,  in  my  time,  a  most  slan¬ 
derous  and  ignorant  piece  of  Anti-Semitic  propaganda. 
Nor  was  any  book  or  article  too  shoddy,  too  ill-written, 
too  superficial  to  put  more  money  into  the  purses  of 
Singleton  and  Leaf.  So  far,  so  good.  In  our  preda¬ 
tory  economic  system  such  was  the  clear  right  of  these 
gentlemen.  But  why  the  odious  corruption  of  which 
my  pitiful  and  shabby  neighbor  was  the  sign  and  sym¬ 
bol?  Why  “get  together  luncheons”  for  the  firm’s 
employees  with  speeches  and  base  rhetoric  and  brazen 
enthusiasm?  Enthusiasm  for  the  ill-gotten  gains  of 
Singleton  and  Leaf!  They  were  the  masters  and  we 
were  the  men.  Very  well.  Why  this  unctuous  lying, 
this  degrading  of  the  souls  of  the  wage-slave?  The 
proletarian  printers  were  far  more  self-respecting  in 
this  matter  than  the  business  and  editorial  employees 
who  fawned  and  “enthused”  (vile  word  for  a  vile 
thing)  over  the  growth  of  the  business.  .  .  .  Later  I 
often  gave  the  best  that  was  in  me  and  often  the  last 

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ounce  of  my  strength  for  a  wretched  wage.  But  I 
served  the  spiritual  common-weal  in  no  ignoble  way. 
And  I  could  have  served  that  common-weal  in  a  far 
humbler  office  with  my  human  dignity  unimpaired. 
The  meanest  door-keeper  in  the  house  of  the  Republic 
still  serves — the  Republic.  There  should  not  he  money 
enough  in  the  world  to  hire  any  self-sustaining  man  to 
minister  to  the  voracities  of  those  whose  aims  are  alien 
from  his  own  and  commonly  demonstrably  sinister. 
When  former  students  of  mine  tell  me  that  they  are 
“making  good”  with  this  corporation  or  that  and 
boast  of  the  power  and  wealth  of  those  corporations,  a 
sense  of  bleakness  fills  me.  The  humble  digger  of  the 
earth  may  be  a  slave  in  body;  the  young  business  man 
or  engineer  who  furthers  the  interests  of  his  master 
is  a  slave  in  soul. 

All  summer,  a  great  and  flaring  summer,  I  watched 
the  tramps  and  “pan-handlers”  on  Union  Square  dur¬ 
ing  my  luncheon  hour.  They  dozed  over  stray  news¬ 
papers  and  smoked  remnants  of  tobacco  in  disreput¬ 
able  pipes.  They  fascinated  me — their  white,  un¬ 
shaven  faces,  reddish  eyes,  frayed  coats,  ripped  boots. 
They  stared  at  me — careless,  unashamed,  imperturb¬ 
able  .  .  .  free,  in  that  they  had  cast  off  responsibility 
and  subservience.  Types  of  the  eternal  beggar,  the  out¬ 
cast,  the  rebel,  the  unquiet  one.  He  was  beside  the 
gates  of  Niniveh — as  in  Union  Square.  But  most  of 
us  have  an  undying  house-dweller  and  even  house¬ 
holder  within  us.  We  need  warmth  and  security  and 
respect.  Especially  when  we  are  young.  Yet  I  under¬ 
stood  the  temptation  of  stepping  out  of  the  ranks  and 
drifting  off  into  the  land  of  unconsidered  men.  .  .  . 
I  understood  it  so  well  that  I  openly  and  frankly,  at 

[130] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


Singleton,  Leaf  and  Company’s,  showed  my  sense 
of  the  absurdity  and  vulgarity  of  the  whole  business. 
So  the  firm  set  me  down  as  an  able  but  queer  and  un¬ 
ambitious  person — one  that  sensible  people  could  make 
nothing  of — and  we  parted  on  friendly  enough  terms. 
I  still  have  a  letter  of  recommendation  that  Leaf  gave 
me.  It  seems  queer  and  remote  and  unreal.  It  did  me 
little  good. 

But  I  met  Mary  that  year.  .  .  .  Bread  came  some¬ 
how.  I  wrote  stuff  for  the  Review  of  Reviews  and 
articles  for  the  Times  and  she  wrote  verses  for  it.  I 
sold  some  poems  to  Collier’s.  We  had  each  other.  .  .  . 
I  recall  September  days  full  of  a  soft,  grey  drizzle. 
The  lights  of  the  street-lamps  trembled  in  a  thousand 
rays  through  the  wet  air.  But  we,  under  one  umbrella, 
recked  little  of  the  world.  The  weather  cleared  and 
brightened  as  October  came.  We  lingered  on  River¬ 
side  Drive  and  heard  the  rustle  of  the  leaves  under  our 
feet  and  waited  until  the  sun  set  in  a  bronze  haze  over 
the  palisades.  We  sat  on  a  bench  under  the  bare  pop¬ 
lars  with  all  the  stars  of  heaven  for  our  own.  We  were, 
of  course,  aware  of  the  necessary  briefness  of  this 
period,  but  we  dwelt  with  all  our  might  in  the  days  and 
hours — numbered  days  and  hours — that  were  given  us. 
The  windfalls  grew  fewer  and  fewer,  the  weather 
colder  and  colder.  With  a  brave  and  lovely  bright¬ 
ness  in  her  eyes  Mary  took  me  to  the  boat.  For  the 
present  we  were  defeated  and  I  had  to  seek  refuge  at 
home. 

n 

Queenshaven  was  beautiful  in  its  own  type  of 
wintry  beauty.  The  sunlight  filtered  through  the  blue 

[  131  ] 


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air  with  a  smooth,  golden  glow  like  honey.  All  objects 
were  defined  with  an  indescribable  clearness.  The  dry 
spears  of  the  palmettos  rattled  softly.  My  father  and 
mother  were  so  glad  to  have  me  that,  by  tacit  consent, 
all  troubling  questions  were  dismissed.  Also  my 
father’s  income  had  increased  soemwhat  and  it  seemed 
to  me  that  to  be  calm  for  a  period  and  think  hard  was, 
after  all,  the  strictly  practical  thing  to  do.  First  of  all, 
it  seemed  clear  to  me  then  that  I  could  not  teach.  Even 
were  it  possible  after  long  months  or  even  years  to  get 
a  small  appointment,  I  was  unwilling  to  risk  the  sus¬ 
pense  and  the  humiliation.  There  was  nothing  left 
me  but  such  skill  as  I  had  in  writing.  But  criticism 
and  verse  would  not  suffice.  Prose  fiction  was  the  only 
thing  at  which  one  could  earn  a  living.  So  I  deter¬ 
mined  to  become  a  short  story  writer  and  a  novelist. 
Perhaps  I  didn’t  reason  the  matter  out  quite  so 
coldly.  Or  else  I  let  my  reasoning  be  guided  by  a 
strong  and  hitherto  unsuspected  impulse  which  stirred 
somewhere  in  the  depth  of  consciousness.  The  things 
I  had  seen  and  lived  through  in  New  York  with  all  the 
impassioned  observation  and  pain  of  youth  seemed  to 
become  denser  at  certain  points,  to  gather — in  my 
imaginative  memory — into  definite  motifs.  I  seemed 
suddenly  to  be  able  to  see  them  with  a  more  penetrat¬ 
ing  eye.  Fragments  torn  from  the  context  of  life 
seemed  to  become  organic,  to  lift  themselves  from  the 
more  inert  mass  of  experience  and  to  take  on  an  in¬ 
dependent  existence.  What  I  needed  next  was  a 
method.  I  had  never  studied  closely  the  technique  of 
modern  fiction.  A  very  sure  instinct  led  me  to  Henry 
James,  to  the  clear,  brimming  stories  of  his  middle 
y^ars :  The  Lesson  of  the  Master,  Broken  Wings,  The 

[132] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


Altar  of  the  Dead.  I  soon  knew  what,  for  my  purpose, 
I  needed  to  know.  I  didn’t,  I  must  say  in  justice  to 
myself,  imitate  Henry  James  at  all.  But  no  one  with 
the  craftsman’s  insight  can  read  these  stories — I 
lingered  over  about  fifteen — without  learning  from 
that  close  and  scrupulous  master  the  essential  secrets 
of  imaginative  narrative. 

In  a  state  of  very  high  mental  tension — extraordi¬ 
narily  clear  and  yet  almost  mystical — I  wrote  three 
stories.  Nothing  I  have  ever  done  cost  me  so  little 
trouble.  There  was  no  change  or  erasure  in  the  manu¬ 
scripts.  Yet  I  felt  quite  certain  that  the  work  had — 
in  structure,  style,  characterization— a  real  and  a  new 
felicity.  I  am  recording  the  feelings  of  the  time;  I 
have  not  read  the  stories  in  years.  But  I  was  not 
wholly  wrong.  For  only  a  few  months  ago  Dreiser 
said  to  me:  “Why  don’t  you  reprint  those  early 
stories!  I  never  saw  stuff  so  full  of  a  sense  of  beauty.” 

I  typed  my  work  and  hesitated.  A  friend  in  New 
York  had  once  said  thoughtfully:  “Maybe  you  could 
get  stuff  into  the  magazines  more  easily  if  you  used  a 
pseudonym.  Your  name’s  very  Jewish.”  I  pondered 
the  matter.  I  did  not  know  how  absurd  his  notion  was. 
Should  I  use  a  pseudonym!  Should  I — it  was  possible 
— make  my  name  less  foreign  by  a  change  in  spelling! 
I  had  a  few  difficult  hours.  Should  I  risk  my  last 
chance!  In  spite  of  my  recent  experience  I  didn’t  feel 
nearly  so  strongly  on  nationality  and  its  rights  in 
America  as  I  do  now.  Nevertheless  I  decided  not  to 
betray  myself  even  to  the  extent  of  concealing  or  of 
altering  my  name.  True,  however,  to  the  traditions 
of  my  Queenshaven  past,  I  sent  my  stories  to  the  At¬ 
lantic  Monthly. 


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In  due  time  the  editors  of  the  Atlantic  replied  that 
‘  ‘  they  were  not  unaware  of  the  quality  or  significance 
of  these  sketches,  but  that  even  among  the  clientele  of 
the  Atlantic  there  were,  they  feared,  not  enough  people 
who  would  care  for  them.”  My  mother  and  father,  in 
their  unalterable  devotion  to  quality  rather  than  profit¬ 
ableness  of  achievement,  were  proud  of  this  evidently 
sincere  statement.  But  I  thought  of  Mary  who  was 
coming  to  visit  my  mother,  and  the  fear  crept  over  me 
that  I  might  be  doomed  to  penniless  quality  and  un¬ 
popularity.  It  occurred  to  me  that  I  knew  nothing  of 
the  popular  fiction  of  the  day.  So  I  tried  to  read 
stories  in  the  magazines.  But  I  couldn’t.  Nor  have  I 
succeeded  since.  The  stuff  pretends  to  render  life  and 
interpret  it  and  has  no  contact  with  reality  at  any 
point.  Dishonest,  sapless  twaddle,  guided  by  an  im¬ 
possible  moral  perfectionism — a  false  perfectionism, 
too,  since  its  ideals  are  always  tribal — and  strung  on  a 
string  of  pseudo-romantic  love.  I  remembered,  how¬ 
ever,  that  I  had  once  or  twice  read  in  the  Smart  Set 
stories  with  a  touch,  at  least,  of  vitality,  earnestness, 
verisimilitude.  So  I  sent  my  rejected  stories  there.  In 
less  than  two  weeks  came  a  letter  from  Charles  Hanson 
Towne,  who  was  then  the  editor.  He  accepted  all  three 
stories  and  asked  for  more. 

m 

One  knows  the  kind  of  anecdote  that  is  told  of  the 
literary  aspirant.  That’s  what  he  is  called.  The  kind 
of  advice — with  its  broad  touch  of  commercialism  and 
bourgeois  canniness — that  is  given  him.  Never  be  dis¬ 
couraged!  Rewrite!  Send  your  stories  in  order  to 

[134] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


every  magazine  in  the  country !  W atch  what  the  editors 
want!  Success  to  him  who  sticks  it  out — tw^o  years, 
three,  five.  Success — the  current  connotations  of  the 
word  are  enough  to  make  a  voluntary  outcast  of  any 
self-respecting  soul.  Well,  I  said  to  myself,  I  had 
made  up  my  mind  four  months  before  to  write  stories. 
The  result  showed  the  absurdity  of  the  humdrum  ad¬ 
vice,  the  vulgar  maxims  of  the  tradesmen  in  letters. 
It  did — in  the  deepest  sense.  Only  I  drew  impossible 
inferences  in  the  tense  hopefulness  of  those  days.  And 
my  delusion  was  fated  to  completeness.  J oel  Chandler 
Harris  founded  Uncle  Remus’  Magazine  in  Atlanta 
and  bought  my  fourth  story,  sending,  almost  by  re¬ 
turn  mail,  a  letter  of  enthusiastic  praise  and  a  checque 
for  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars.  My  father 
was,  characteristically,  aglow;  he  saw  visions  of 
grandeur.  My  mother’s  womanly  and  solitary  heart 
yearned  over  Mary.  So  Mary  and  I  were  married  and 
we  all  settled  down  in  an  old,  roomy  house  in  Queens- 
haven.  The  house  overlooked  the  bay  and  from  our 
study  windows  Mary  and  I  watched  the  horned  moon 
float  over  the  silken  swell  of  the  dark  waters  and 
listened  to  the  tide. . . . 

Those  altitudes  of  life  are  brief  and  have,  upon 
retrospect,  a  touch  of  utter  pathos.  To  be  upon  them 
you  must,  the  world  being  what  it  is,  be  out  of  touch 
with  reality.  There  is  the  temper,  to  be  sure,  that 
frankly  accepts  reality  as  sordid,  mean,  unresponsive 
to  our  finer  impulses  and,  turning  resolutely  from  it, 
strives  after  the  illusions  and  takes  refuge  in  the  art 
that  depicts  life  “as  it  ought  to  be.”  And  commonly, 
in  street  and  church  and  school  among  ns,  such  people 
call  themselves  idealists  and  scorn  us  to  whom  the  illu- 

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sion  and  the  dream  is  too  cheap  a  thing.  To  ns  there 
comes,  after  the  first  flush  of  youth,  the  troubling  sense 
of  being  duped  to  no  good  or  enduring  purpose.  We 
come  to  live  in  an  autumnal  world  of  the  spirit.  .  .  . 
Yet  we  are  the  true  lovers  of  the  ideal.  We  refuse  to 
be  put  off  with  a  wretched  substitute.  Either  the  values 
by  which  we  would  live  are  valid  in  the  world  of  reality 
or  they  are  not.  If  they  are  not,  it  is  better  and  wiser 
to  know  and  to  submit.  The  eternal  children  among 
men,  on  the  other  hand,  pass  from  toy  to  toy.  Yet  in 
the  end  they  must  see — with  what  a  late  and  grey  and 
piteous  disillusion — that  their  toys  are  but  tinsel  and 
wax  and  bran.  .  .  . 

Mary  and  I  believed  that  here,  in  our  American 
place  and  time,  fine,  sound,  veracious  art  would  easily 
gain  for  us  the  wherewithal  for  our  very  frugal  needs 
and  joys.  I  wrought  out  my  stories  with  the  severest 
exactions  upon  structure,  verbal  grace,  inner  truth. 
Towne  bought  more  of  them.  The  editor  of  a  weekly 
of  rather  shady  reputation  asked  for  stories.  A  sense 
of  insecurity  which  gradually  overcame  me  persuaded 
me  to  sell  him  my  manuscripts.  If  the  stories  were  as 
perfect  as  I  could  make  them,  what  did  it  matter?  Un¬ 
happily  all  these  people  paid  only  a  cent  a  word.  I 
spent  two  weeks  of  the  most  highly  organized  artistic 
labor  over  a  story  and  the  material  result  was  thirty 
dollars — payable  at  some  hazy  date  months  ahead.  I 
summoned  my  deepest  and  serenest  powers  and  wrote 
a  longer  narrative  and  sent  it  to  Harper’s.  Henry 
Mills  Alden  saw  its  artistic  points  and  half  agreed  to 
buy  it — if  I  would  give  it  a  happy  ending.  But  the 
story  didn’t  end  happily!  I  looked  at  Mary.  She 
should  have  had  a  new  gown.  And  so,  for  the  first 

[  136] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


time,  I  went  in  for  the  trade  of  writing  and  altered 
the  ending  of  my  story.  But  Alden  didn’t  take  the 
story,  after  all. 

A  happy  ending.  Cheerfulness.  Here  are  the  rocks 
on  which  I  suffered  my  second  ship-wreck  in  life.  For 
the  Alden  incident  is  merely  the  type  and  symbol  of 
many  others.  All  the  editors  admitted  that  my  stories 
had  very  uncommon  merits.  But  they  were  too  sombre. 
.  .  .  Once,  just  once,  I  wrote  a  story  full  of  gentle 
pathos.  With  a  touch  of  irony  I  called  it  A  Sentimental 
Story.  When  it  appeared  editors  from  all  quarters 
wrote  to  me.  Send  us  stories  like  your  Sentimental 
Story !  The  abysmal  folly !  I  could  no  more  recapture 
that  mood — so  unlike  my  typical  moods — than  I  could 
bring  back  the  perished  hour  in  which  that  mood  had 
come  to  me.  Of  such  considerations,  as  of  the  whole 
nature  of  art,  the  editors  seemed  to  be  densely 
ignorant. 

I  determined  to  make  myself  independent  of  the 
magazines  and  their  absurd  requirements.  I  felt  the 
need  of  a  larger  canvas  anyhow.  So,  writing  just 
stories  enough  for  our  barest  needs — my  father  and 
mother  kept  the  pot  boiling  and  paid  the  rent — I  began 
a  novel. 

My  subject  wasn’t,  I  can  see  now,  a  highly  fruit¬ 
ful  onei  Nor  had  I  yet  quite  transcended  the  notion 
that  one  must  follow  to  some  definite  end  in  circum¬ 
stances  the  strands  of  the  narrative.  In  other  words,  I 
was  still  unaware  of  the  endless  flowing  of  the  world, 
of  the  utter  absence  of  finality  at  any  point  except  the 
point  of  death.  And  also,  a  subtle  and  troubled  sense 
of  what — through  the  editors  and  through  personal 
talk — I  suspected  concerning  the  attitude  of  my  Amer- 

[137] 

i 


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ican  audience,  prevented  me,  at  many  points,  from 
practising  my  art  in  its  full  severity.  One  must  have 
bread.  ...  Yet,  with  every  allowance  made,  the  thing 
was  felt,  seen,  rendered.  It  was  young,  that  first  novel 
of  mine,  but  there  were  pages  and  chapters  that  both 
in  the  texture  of  the  prose  and  the  shaping  of  the  mat¬ 
ter  had  a  touch  of  life  and  beauty. 

Often  now  I  wrote  on  my  sheer  nerves.  A  sense  of 
discouragement  had  come  over  us  all.  Small  checques 
for  stories  dribbled  in  from  time  to  time.  But  my 
father  had  to  work  harder  than  ever.  Instead  of  lift¬ 
ing  the  burden  of  life  from  him  and  my  mother  I  had, 
in  the  material  sense,  added  to  it.  The  thing  was  un¬ 
endurable  and  throbbed  in  me  with  the  fierceness  of  a 
wound.  Then  the  manuscript  of  my  novel  came  back 
from  a  large  publishing  house,  and  in  the  smiting  heat 
of  the  Queenshaven  summer  Mary  fell  ill. 

With  a  sense,  at  last,  almost  of  despair,  my  father 
and  I  borrowed  some  money.  I  had  to  get  another 
start,  to  lift  the  burden  from  him,  to  fight  my  own 
man’s  battle.  My  mother  and  I  had  a  sense  of  the 
bitter  tragedy  of  that  parting,  though  we  sought  to 
conceal  it  even  from  ourselves  and  though  Mary  was 
full  of  cheer  and  sweetness  and  courage.  Ferris  rose 
to  the  occasion  and  came  to  the  train  to  see  us  off. 
Perhaps  he  had  a  suspicion  of  how  broken  and  defeated 
I  felt. 

IV 

We  took  a  small  flat  on  Washington  Heights.  The 
house  was  new,  but  it  was  dingy  by  nature — cheap, 
ugly,  abominable.  Yet  we  had  the  Hudson  land¬ 
scape  almost  at  our  door  and  we  had  money  enough  for 

[138] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


three  months  and  the  Smart  Set  owed  me  a  checqne  or 
two.  So  Mary  and  I  picnicked  in  our  little  kitchen — we 
had  no  dining-table — and  felt  more  hopeful.  And  there 
was  a  glow  in  our  shabby  study  when  Towne  sent  an 
enthusiastic  letter  concerning  the  manuscript  of  the 
novel  and  promised  to  get  a  publisher  for  it. 

Meantime  I  had  to  make  money.  The  respect¬ 
able  magazines  would  have  none  of  me.  They  re¬ 
jected  my  poems  and  stories  with  rigid  regularity. 
The  editors  never  failed  to  praise  my  work  and  never 
dreamed  of  buying  it.  There  was  something  in  it — on 
that  point  they  were  unanimous  and  clear — which  their 
subscribers  would  not  endure.  Towne,  my  one  edi¬ 
torial  friend,  introduced  me  to  the  editor-in-chief  of 
the  Munsey  magazines,  an  agreeable,  sweet-natured 
Irishman.  The  latter  and  his  assistant,  always  hard 
pressed  for  copy,  gave  a  little  luncheon  party  for  me 
and  explained  to  me  the  mysteries  of  the  “serial.” 
The  All-Story  Magazine,  The  Scrap-Book,  The  Cava¬ 
lier,  were  in  constant  need  of  serial  stories  of  from 
twenty  thousand  to  sixty  thousand  words  in  length. 
These  serials  had  to  be  built  in  blocks  of  three  chap¬ 
ters,  each  block  thus  constituting  a  ten  thousand  word 
installment.  Each  chapter  had  to  end  with  a  minor 
device  of  suspended  mystery,  each  installment  with  a 
major  device.  The  mystery  must  not  be  solved  until 
the  last  chapter  of  the  last  installment.  Nor  must  it 
be  solved  then  by  any  method  involving  an  explana¬ 
tory  or  retrospective  narrative.  There  must  be  little 
description  and  no  analysis.  There  must  be  a  power¬ 
ful  love  interest  but  no  hint  of  sex.  The  pay  for  these 
marvelous  concoctions  was  two-thirds  of  a  cent  a 
word.  But  the  bait  for  the  struggling  hack  lay  in  this# 

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You  could  drivel  to  the  tune  of  sixty  thousand  words 
and  the  company  paid  on  acceptance.  I  am  glad  to 
record  this  significant  little  feature  of  our  civilization. 
No  one  else  is  likely  to  do  it.  And  these  magazines 
sold  enormously  at  that  time. 

They  had  given  me  some  excellent  wine  at  the 
kmcheon  party  and  as  I  walked  up-town  on  the  Av¬ 
enue  the  proposal  seemed  an  admirable  one  with  which 
to  bridge  over  the  time  until  the  novel  should  make 
my  fame  and  fortune.  At  home  I  took  a  soberer  view. 
I  hadn’t  a  particle  of  ingenuity;  I  had  trained  myself 
in  the  austerest  methods  of  the  novelist’s  art.  Flau¬ 
bert,  James,  Conrad  were  my  teachers.  Above  all, 
George  Moore.  I  wrote  slowly,  with  infinite  pains, 
weighing  each  word  for  its  values  in  flavor,  color,  tone 
— hovering  over  the  melody  of  the  sentence,  the  har¬ 
mony  of  the  paragraph,  desperate  when  the  beauty  of 
the  prose  failed  to  orchestrate  the  strain  of  the  mean¬ 
ing.  .  .  .  But  I  had  to  make  money. 

I  thought  closely:  There  was  no  earthly  way  of 
building  a  Munsey  serial  except  upon  a  motif  of  pur¬ 
suit.  And  it  must  be  the  pursuit  of  a  criminal,  a  treas¬ 
ure  or  a  girl.  Preferably  of  two — the  criminal  is 
responsible  for  his  original  crime  plus  the  disappear¬ 
ance  of  the  girl.  Or  a  pursuit  of  all  three — the  crim¬ 
inal’s  crime  involves  spiriting  away  the  treasure  and 
the  girl.  Then,  in  the  last  chapter  of  the  last  install¬ 
ment  the  hero  defeats  the  criminal,  obtains  the  treas¬ 
ure,  marries  the  girl.  So  far  the  thing  worked  out  with 
mathematical  accuracy.  Each  yarn  must  then  be  indi¬ 
vidualized  by  differences  in  setting  and  incident  and 
such  touches  of  quaintness  or  breadth  of  adventurous¬ 
ness  as  could  be  given  it.  I  reread  Henry  Esmond 

[140] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


and  The  Master  of  Balantrae  for  that  note  of  gallant 
spiritedness  which  is  common  to  both.  Then,  from 
the  half-forgotten  narratives  of  a  Queenshaven  ac¬ 
quaintance — a  seaman  turned  shoe-merchant — I  built 
up  my  first  synopsis.  This  synopsis  was  pronounced 
good  by  the  editors  and  I  proceeded  to  the  task  of 
composition.  Now  came  the  rub.  I  had  to  get  rid  of 
my  usual  style  and  point  of  view.  They  were  worse 
than  useless  for  the  purpose.  I  had  to  write  briskly 
and  in  a  falsetto.  I  struggled  for  days.  Then  came 
the  solution.  I  ceased  composing  with  pen  and  paper. 
On  the  typewriter  I  could  assume  the  whole  alien  out¬ 
look  and  tone  and  turn  out,  on  good  days,  copy 
adequate  for  the  purpose  without  change  or  erasure. 
I  have  written  as  high  as  six  thousand  words  of  serial 
stuff  a  day,  driving  my  Gibson  hero  over  land  and  sea, 
by  hair-breadth  ’scapes,  until  he  had  the  villain  (usu¬ 
ally,  by  a  pleasant  American  convention,  a  foreigner) 
by  the  throat  and  a  girl  and  a  treasure  in  each  arm. 

I  wrote  and  sold  six  serials  against  every  human 
and  artistic  instinct  of  my  nature.  Then  I  broke 
down.  The  vein  of  base  invention  wouldn’t  yield  an¬ 
other  drop;  the  insufferable  falseness  of  the  whole 
business  literally  turned  my  stomach.  I  was  ready  to 
do  anything,  suffer  anything — only  not  write  serials. 

v 

Meanwhile  there  was  the  novel,  the  thought  of 
which  sustained  Mary  and  me.  Towne  had  given  it  to 
Dreiser  and  Dreiser  liked  it.  We  had  been  reading 
Sister  Carrie  which  had  just  made  its  second  and  defi¬ 
nite  appearance,  and  Dreiser’s  approval  repaid  me 

[141] 


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amply  for  the  snubs  of  the  commercial  editors  and  pub¬ 
lishers.  True  that  Dreiser  had  no  style.  Neither  had 
Balzac.  And  yet  even  those  quaint  vulgarities  of 
phrase,  which  he  has  since  eliminated,  helped  to  render 
his  subject  in  Sister  Carrie.  Occasionally,  too,  through 
the  sheer  fullness  and  exactness  of  that  penetrating 
vision  of  his  he  strikes  out  curious,  unlovely,  journalese 
little  sentences  that  are  worth  tons  of  ordinary  smooth 
writing.  And  how  he  wrings  and  cleanses  the  heart 
with  the  fates  of  his  people !  There  is  no  profounder 
illustration  than  the  character  of  Hurstwood  in  all 
literature  of  the  great  saying  of  Goethe  that  every 
concrete  thing,  if  it  perfectly  represents  itself,  becomes 
the  sufficient  symbol  of  all.  We  know  this  man  as  we 
know  few  men  in  life.  And  we  know,  too,  if  we  can 
begin  to  feel  the  approach  of  middle  age,  that  there  is 
a  Hurstwood  in  each  one  of  us.  .  .  . 

I  went  to  see  Dreiser  and  felt  less  shame  over  my 
serials.  For  wasn’t  he  editing  The  Delineator?  The 
old  question  of  bread.  His  office  high  up  in  the  But- 
terick  building  had  from  its  large  windows  one  of  the 
most  splendid  and  heroic  views  in  the  world — far 
across  the  harbor  of  New  York.  There  he  sat,  a  large, 
unshapely,  sombre  hulk  of  a  man — (he  has  brightened 
and  softened  since) — with  head  bent  forward,  folding 
and  eternally  unfolding  his  handkerchief  into  ac¬ 
cordion  pleats.  There  was  a  brooding  gaze  in  his  near¬ 
sighted  eyes — the  gaze  with  which  he  has  seen  life 
more  largely  and  truly  than  any  other  American  novel¬ 
ist.  And  he  has  let  life  interpret  itself  upon  the  basis 
of  its  eternal  facts.  He  has  let  life  mean — life !  Not 
some  moralistic  crochet  that  is  the  weapon  of  his  own 
intolerance.  By  virtue  of  that  quality  he  is,  in  his 

[142] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


humble  and  homespun  way,  of  the  kin,  at  least,  of  the 
masters.  Of  what  did  Homer  approve,  or  Shake¬ 
speare,  or  Rembrandt  or  Goethe? 

Dreiser  recommended  my  novel  to  the  small  firm 
of  publishers  who  had  recently  brought  out  Sister 
Carrie.  So,  very  soon,  I  had  my  first  contract  in  my 
pocket  and  was  very  proud  of  it,  and  Mary  and  I 
walked  on  a  memorable  night  under  a  huge,  pale  moon 
on  Wadsworth  Avenue  and  reckoned  out  how  much 
we  would  have  if  our  novel — we  called  it  ours — sold 
twenty  thousand  copies.  If  it  sold  only  ten  thou¬ 
sand — ?  Oh,  it  would  be  a  beginning,  and  I  could 
write  another  in  peace  and  there  would  be  no  more 
serials.  I  sent  an  enthusiastic  letter  to  my  mother  and 
father  and  they  trusted  as  we  did. 

The  novel  appeared.  For  a  first  book  the  critical 
reception  was  remarkable.  William  Morton  Payne 
wrote  of  it  in  a  well-known  journal  as  a  book  “in  which 
the  imperative  demands  of  technique — both  verbal  and 
architectonic — are  never  ignored,  and  which  yet  has  no 
lack  of  rich  human  substance.  ...  It  is  not  a  book  for 
the  young  person  to  read,”  he  went  on,  “but  one  from 
which  the  mature  mind  can  get  nothing  but  good  and 
which  offers  a  singular  satisfaction  to  the  artistic  per¬ 
ceptions.”  Similar  was  the  tone  of  other  reviews. 
There  was  generous  praise,  to  be  sure,  but  never  with¬ 
out  some  subtle  implication  of  warning.  A  mythical, 
at  least,  a  theoretical  “young  person”  was,  somehow, 
to  be  guarded  against  my  book.  A  number  of  review¬ 
ers  took  up  the  cudgels  for  this  young  person  and  be¬ 
labored  me  in  unmeasured  terms.  The  Presbyterian 
editor  of  the  Queenshaven  Courier,  a  friend  of  mine — 
(I  thought) — arose  in  his  wrath  and  his  terror  for  the 

[143] 


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young  person  and  abused  my  book  in  terms  that  were 
literally  foul-mouthed.  .  .  .  An  old  college  friend 
from  Queenshaven  asked  me,  months  later,  what  my 
wife  thought  of  the  book.  He  asked  it  with  the  leer 
of  free-masonry  in  nastiness  which  moral  men  assume 
in  smoking-rooms.  To  him  there  was  no  difference  be¬ 
tween  a  smutty  joke  and  a  naturalistic  novel.  He 
would  have  read  Mme.  Bovary  in  secret,  as  a  i ‘dirty 
book,”  and  hidden  it  from  his  wife.  To  her  who  was 
“ sweet  and  pure”  he  gives,  I  know,  the  works  of 
Robert  Chambers  and  Harold  Bell  Wright.  ...  I  re¬ 
flected  on  the  young  person  for  whom  American  litera¬ 
ture  is  kept  “ clean  and  wholesome.”  How  old  was 
this  young  person?  Evidently  seventeen,  at  least.  For 
the  most  foolish  parent  would  supervise  the  reading  of 
youngsters  under  that  age  without  necessarily  con¬ 
demning  the  books  withheld.  And  was  the  young 
American  at  seventeen  such  an  imbecile  that  the  cen¬ 
tral  passions  of  life — their  existence  even — if  pre¬ 
sented  and  interpreted  in  art  came  in  the  nature  of  a 
revelation?  Or  else  so  vicious  that  true  books  would 
start  him  straightway  on  an  abandoned  career  ?  Surely 
not !  Then  it  was  but  again  the  old,  ineradicable  lust 
for  lying,  for  unveracity  of  soul,  for  an  unfeatured  and 
unmeaning  harmlessness  of  surface — the  old  duality  of 
conscience  which  makes  men  pretend  that  the  thing  is 
what  it  is  not,  but  rather  some  foolish,  blank,  marrow¬ 
less  phantom.  .  .  .  Literature,  to  be  wholesome,  my 
friend  the  professor  of  English  philology  used  to  tell 
me,  should  portray  life  as  it  ought  to  be.  How  ought  it 
to  be?  Ah,  cheerful,  sober,  kindly  .  .  .  like  the  Book 
of  Job,  I  suppose,  or  the  Illiad,  or  the  Divine  Comedy 
or  Lear  or  Faust !  Without  passion  or  sorrow  or  the 

[144] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


hardihood  of  thought.  .  .  .  Base-ball,  prohibition  and 
the  Saturday  Evening  Post.  What  spiritual  impli¬ 
cations  of  a  national  culture. 

How  could  my  poor  little  book, brave  such  an  array 
of  forces?  It  didn’t  sell.  It  didn’t  sell  at  all.  I  wrote 
another  without  one  touch  of  the  sensuous  beauty  of 
the  first — a  bare,  plain,  austere  transcript  from  life, 
holding  within  itself,  because  it  is  of  the  very  core 
of  realty,  a  massive  moral  implication.  This  book,  of 
which  I  am  still  proud  in  retrospect,  was  published 
too.  And  Anthony  Comstock,  that  human  symbol  of 
the  basic  lies  of  our  social  structure,  confiscated  the 
copies  and  caused  the  plates  to  be  destroyed.  I  was 
beaten,  broken,  breadless.  I  was  a  scholar  and  for¬ 
bidden  to  teach,  an  artist  and  forbidden  to  write.  Lib¬ 
erty,  opportunity.  The  words  had  nothing  friendly  to 
my  ear. 

VI 

Mary  and  I  agreed  that,  so  defeated,  we  couldn’t 
go  home  both  for  our  own  and  for  my  parents’  sake. 
It  would  be  only  a  palliative,  after  all.  Somehow, 
though  all  the  forces  of  life  seemed  against  me — my 
health  was  poor  now,  too — I  must  struggle  on.  And 
so  there  comes  to  me  now  from  that  period  the  memory 
of  many  months,  strangely  quiet,  for  all  the  care  and 
need,  and  full  of  an  almost  eerie  sunshine.  I  see  Mary 
and  myself  wandering  across  queer  neighborhoods — a 
sticky,  swarming  yet  faintly  genteel  street  called 
Bradhurst  Avenue — on  our  way  to  Third.  Somewhere 
about  us  we  carried,  carefully  wrapped,  the  silver 
spoons  we  were  going  to  pawn.  The  gas-bill  had  to 
be  paid  or  the  milk-bill.  Then  my  father,  in  his  ever 

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watchful  goodness,  would  send  a  money-order  or  a 
small  checque  would  come  in  and  we  would  take  a  long 
tramp  just  for  fun.  Up  Riverside  Drive  to  Dyckman 
Street  or  into  queer  neighborhoods  in  the  Bronx  where 
we  discovered,  among  many  other  things,  an  empty, 
sandy,  forlorn  little  street  called  Shakespeare  Avenue. 
These  wanderings  rested  my  worn  nerves. 

I  am  not  quite  sure  how  we  did  live.  My  father 
helped.  Friends  helped — friends  of  Mary  and  of 
mine,  now  of  us  both — friends  who  had  and  have  no 
motive  but  their  affection  for  us,  our  friends  still,  Jew 
and  Gentile,  of  whom  it  touches  me  to  think.  I  wrote 
reviews  for  The  Nation  and  The  Forum.  I  read  manu¬ 
scripts  for  a  friendly  publishing  house.  I  gave  a  few 
private  lessons.  But  the  situation  was  an  impossible 
one.  It  was  only  putting  otf  week  by  week — how  often 
we  did  pawn  the  silver — a  day  of  inevitable  collapse. 

I  went  back  to  Brent.  It  was  a  bitter  thing  to  be 
forced  to  do.  He  set  in  motion  the  whole  machinery  of 
the  department,  he  gave  me  the  full  weight  of  his  influ¬ 
ence.  It  was  useless.  I  was  refused  at  the  University 
of  Virginia — because  I  was  a  Jew.  I  was  refused  at 
the  University  of  Minnesota — because  I  was  a  Jew. 
The  reason  was  scarcely  veiled;  it  was  not  debatable. 
Ellard  was  now  teaching  at  Monroe.  He  plead  with 
his  chief  and  Brent  and  Richards  wrote  to  the  man. 
He  refused  me — because  I  was  a  J ew.  .  .  .  Brent  felt, 
rightly,  that  he  was  at  the  end  of  his  resources.  No 
one  could  have  done  more. 

It  occurred  to  me,  of  course,  that  I  might  teach 
German.  But  I  felt,  in  a  sense,  insufficiently  prepared. 
My  philological  training,  for  instance,  had  all  been 
from  the  point  of  view  of  English.  But  Richards,  like 

[146] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


Brent,  had  faith  in  me  and  brushed  that  consideration 
aside.  An  instructorship  at  Princeton  was  vacant. 
Richards  showed  me  the  letter  which  he  wrote  to  the 
head  of  the  German  Department  there.  He  spoke  of 
my  abilities,  of  my  character,  of  my  personality.  He 
touched  on  the  fact  of  my  race  and  defended  me  with 
noble  emphasis  from  its  supposed  or  real  faults.  I 
was  refused.  .  .  .  Some  years  later  a  university  in  the 
farther  West  needed  a  professor  of  German.  The 
attention  of  the  Dean  there  was  called  to  my  work  and 
reputation  as  a  scholar  and  teacher.  He  wrote  me  a 
tentative  letter.  I  answered  but  never  heard  again. 
Later  he  confided  to  a  friend  of  mine  that  he  had 
sounded  the  trustees.  It  would  have  been  useless  to 
propose  the  name  of  a  Jew.  .  .  .  All  the  men  who 
had  refused  me  at  the  various  universities  were  Anglo- 
Americans,  pillars  of  the  democracy,  proclaimers  of 
its  mission  to  set  the  bond  free  and  equalize  life’s  op¬ 
portunities  for  mankind.  I  shall  be  accused,  of  course, 
of  making  too  much  of  this  matter.  Not  so.  I  may  not 
be  borne  out  by  To-day.  But  there  will  be  a  To-mor¬ 
row.  It  was  a  legitimate  and  searching  test  of  the 
democratic  pretensions  of  the  society  which  these  men 
represent  and  of  the  temper  of  that  society.  Their 
reactions  register  accurately  the  spirit  of  the  nativistic 
oligarchy  which  rules  us.  .  .  .  By  this  time  Ellard 
was  thoroughly  alarmed  for  me.  He  went  to  his  friend, 
the  head  of  the  German  Department  at  Monroe  and 
laid  the  matter  before  him.  Ellard ’s  friend — now  for 
years  mine  too, — is  a  German,  the  finest,  deepest- 
souled  type.  In  six  weeks  I  had  my  appointment  to 
an  instructorship  at  Monroe.  .  .  . 

The  months  between  April  and  October  had  to  be 

[147] 


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bridged.  But  I  got  a  piece  of  translation  to  do  and 
also,  refreshed  by  hope  for  the  future,  I  wrote  one 
more  serial.  In  my  leisure  hours  I  wrote  a  text-book 
in  the  field  of  Germanics  so  as  to  make  a  respectable 
entrance  into  my  new  profession.  I  meant  to  devote 
myself  undividedly  to  it,  for  I  was  convinced  now, 
through  experience  and  reflection,  that  my  art  product 
could  not,  in  this  age,  commend  itself  to  the  strange 
minds  of  my  countrymen.  To  poetry  only  did  I  hope 
to  devote  some  time  in  the  future.  But  I  was  not  aware 
of  all  the  conditions  within  the  academic  life,  nor  did  I 
count  with  the  heaviness  of  the  coming  years. 

I  had  not  been  at  home  in  many  months.  Mary  was 
kept  in  New  York  by  a  misfortune  among  her  kin.  So 
I  went  alone  with  a  feeling,  half  of  delight  and  half  of 
bitter,  grinding  remorse.  I  had  a  job.  But  I  was 
twenty-eight  and  the  job  paid  one  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  I  had  wanted  to  do  so  much.  I  came  with  empty 
hands.  I  had  seen  the  color  of  life  now  and  was  able 
to  estimate  my  chances.  And  so  I  knew  that  the  good 
dream  of  the  years  was  over  and  that  I  would  never 
lift  my  father  and  mother  out  of  the  life  they  were 
living,  that  I  would  not  even  be  able  ever  to  dwell  near 
them  again,  but  always  half  a  continent  away.  Final 
and  fatal  issues.  At  home  they  did  not  make  these 
thoughts  hard  for  me,  God  knows,  but  were  glad  in  the 
bit  of  luck  that  had  come  and  my  mother  promised  to 
visit  Mary  and  me  in  the  West  and  so  make  the  long 
year  of  absence  shorter.  I  stayed  at  home  ten  weeks, 
happy  weeks,  though  often  I  felt  a  tremor  of  unearthly 
fear — all  the  old  eerie  dread  for  my  mother.  .  .  . 

And  in  the  quietude  of  my  own  mind  I  went  over 
the  years  that  had  gone  by  since  I  had  first  left  home. 

[148] 


THE  AMERICAN  FINDS  REFUGE 


I  went  over  these  years  bit  by  bit.  What  were  their 
fruits?  In  every  worldly  sense — not  only  in  the  base 
one — I  had  been  and  I  was  a  wretched  failure.  Yet  I 
could  not  help  believing  that  I  had  good,  even  notable 
talents.  I  knew  also  that  sloth  or  shirking  were  not 
among  my  faults  of  mind  or  character.  Why,  then 
had  it  been  so  ?  It  had  been  so,  the  answer  came,  be¬ 
cause  a  man  can  make  neither  his  gifts  nor  his  char¬ 
acter  count  except  through  those  methods  and  insti¬ 
tutions  which  society  has  organized.  From  these  I  had 
hitherto  been,  in  many  subtle  ways  and  in  one  way 
that  was  gross  and  obvious,  mercilessly  excluded. 

I  had  turned  to  creative  art.  But  my  stories  and 
novels  had  failed,  because  my  way  of  looking  at  life 
seemed  strange  and  sinister  to  most  of  my  country¬ 
men.  For  my  vision  of  it  was  not  of  a  superficial, 
kindly  affair,  all  pleasantly  prearranged.  “If  you  do 
so,  you  are  good  and  happy,  if  otherwise,  bad  and  un- 
happy,  and,  what  is  worse,  not  like  what  other  folks 
desire  to  think  they  are.”  .  .  .  For  the  last  time  I 
read  the  successful  novels  of  that  year.  That  way  were 
fame  and  fortune.  But  the  stuff  made  me  feel  doubly 
hopeless  and  doubly  innocent.  The  stories  were  cheer¬ 
ful — like  cheerful  liars.  They  were  not  about  harsh 
things  or  noble  things  like  myrrh  or  wine,  only  about 
doleful  things  and  sweetish  things,  like  soup  and 
liquorice.  They  were  not  about  love  and  aspiration 
and  death.  They  were  about  flirting  and  success  and 
old  folks’  homes.  They  were  not  even  pure,  they  were 
only  proper.  Life,  in  them,  wasn’t  even  austere,  only 
expurgated.  They  were  false  to  the  shallow  core  of 
them,  false  and  dishonorable.  The  period,  it  is  to  be 
remembered,  was  1910.  But  even  today  an  eminent 

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artist  like  Sherwood  Anderson  finds  the  conventional 
periodicals  inaccessible  and  suffers  the  obvious  conse¬ 
quences. 

Once  more  then,  I  accepted  my  fate.  But  it  was 
not  easy.  For  the  weeks  rolled  by  and  I  knew  that  I 
was  going  a  thousand  miles  away  and  had  no  idea  when 
I  would  be  able  to  earn  money  enough  to  come  back. 
Not  for  myself  did  my  resignation  to  rigorous  poverty 
cut  into  my  soul,  nor  for  Mary — for  she  and  I  had 
each  other  and  friends  and  the  years  to  come — but  for 
the  sake  of  those  two  wan  faces  that  disappeared  from 
my  sight  as  the  train  pulled  out  of  the  Queenshaven 
station. 


[150] 


CHAPTEE  Vn 


The  Business  of  Education. 

i 

Monroe  is  a  forest  city  set  among  lakes.  Indian 
burial  mounds  dot  the  hills  and  beside  one  of  those 
blue  lakes  shy  tepees  appear  overnight  at  certain  sea¬ 
sons.  The  air  is  sharp,  tonic  and  primitive.  The 
storms  of  autumn  sweep  through  the  great  trees  with 
a  severe  and  iron  music.  City  and  lakes  and  forests 
have  in  my  memory  an  air  that  is  primaeval  and  yet 
somehow  touched  with  grace  and  learning.  They  seem 
as  established  as  a  temple,  yet  as  wild  as  an  eagle’s 
wing.  The  university  is  set  upon  a  hill;  its  walls  and 
groves  are  mirrored  in  the  most  beautiful  of  the  five 
lakes.  For  years  Monroe  and  its  memories  had  to 
suffice  me  for  my  inner  springs  of  beauty.  To-day  that 
beauty,  like  so  much  else  in  the  world,  is  scarred  and 
tarnished  in  my  mind.  .  .  . 

Mary  was  kept  in  the  East  by  illness  among  her 
people.  I  came  alone  to  Monroe  during  the  sparkle 
and  glow  of  its  Indian  summer.  Ellard  met  me  and  we 
passed  some  weeks  in  talking  and  rowing  near  the 
yellow  and  bronze  and  scarlet  of  the  lake  shores.  With 
a  fine  sagacity  that  I  have  always  found  in  the  most 
poetical  spirits — not  in  mere  artistic  temperaments — 

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he  gave  me  pithy  and  exact  advice  in  regard  to  this 
new  career  and  activity  and  in  regard  to  the  char¬ 
acters  of  the  men  with  whom  I  was  to  live  and  work. 
He  took  me  to  see  my  chief  Vollberg — tall,  elegant, 
careworn,  expansive,  one  of  the  soundest  minds  and 
hearts  in  the  world;  to  B.,  all  burning  eyes,  domed 
forehead,  Socratic  nose,  sputtering,  lyrical  speech, 
afterwards  my  special  friend  and  comrade  of  that 
group ;  to  F.,  accomplished,  handsome,  but  too  good  a 
lover  of  beauty  to  be  worldly  in  an  evil  sense;  to  P., 
with  his  snapping,  black  Slavic  eyes  and  snapping, 
ironic  speech  and  vast  learning.  And  these  were  only 
a  few  of  that  astonishing  German  department  which 
was,  in  my  time,  one  of  the  goodliest  fellowships  of 
comradely  and  learned  men  on  earth.  Most  of  them  are 
gone  from  there  now — scattered  and  futile  and  alone. 
They  think  of  Monroe,  I  am  sure,  and  B.,  at  least,  who 
is  still  there,  remembers  that  first  departmental  jaunt 
in  which  I  took  part — miles  of  autumnal  forest  and 
golden  field  and  then  an  inn,  and  free  and  racy  talk 
on  art  and  life  and  scholarship;  supper  of  roast  fowl 
and  potatoes  and  cool,  yellow  beer,  and  then  the  walk 
back  over  the  shivering  tracery  of  the  trees’  shadows 
on  the  long,  moonlit  road.  Such  memories  are  preci¬ 
ous  amid  the  waste  and  confusion  of  later  years.  They 
ring  and  gleam  across  time  from  a  saner  and  serener 
world.  .  .  . 

The  sense  of  both  liberation  and  security  which  my 
first  academic  position  gave  me,  the  beauty  of  Monroe, 
the  presence  of  Ellard,  the  forming  of  new  friendships 
— all  these  things  caused  me  to  take  immediately  a 
very  glowing  view  of  my  situation.  Moreover,  the 
University  of  Monroe  was  at  that  time  at  the  highest 

[152] 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


point  of  its  effectiveness  and  power.  It  had  been 
neither  crippled  by  legislative  interference  nor  dark¬ 
ened  and  distraught  by  war;  it  was  as  nearly  as  pos¬ 
sible  the  free  seat  of  learning  of  a  strong  and  hopeful 
democracy.  Hence  I  felt  something  of  a  freedom  and  a 
power  that  I  had  sought  elsewhere  in  vain.  What 
helped  me  in  addition  was  that,  from  the  first,  I  proved 
to  be  a  very  successful  teacher.  It  is  worth  while 
dwelling  for  a  moment  on  this  fact.  If  I  have  harsh 
things  to  say  of  our  whirring  educational  machine, 
they  do  not  spring  from  the  uneasiness  of  personal 
irritation.  From  that  first  fall  in  Monroe  to 
the  end  of  my  academic  career  eight  years  later, 
I  had  in  the  fullest  measure  possible  among  us,  the 
reward  that  makes  a  teacher’s  life  endurable — the  loy¬ 
alty  and  the  gratitude  of  my  students.  I  exacted  of 
them  always  their  best  work  and  straightest  thinking; 
I  tolerated  no  cheap  phrases  or  tribal  formularies  in 
my  class-room.  Hence  my  colleagues  soon  thought  me 
a  little  more  showy  than  safe.  The  students  never 
failed  me — in  Monroe  or  Central  City,  in  peace  or  war. 

Why  did  I  leave  Monroe?  Yollberg  begged  me  to 
stay.  Ellard,  in  the  grip  of  an  intimate  tragedy, 
needed  me.  The  Dean  was  persuasive.  Well,  certain 
responsibilities,  which  shall  be  nameless,  had  to  be 
faced  and  every  penny  was  important.  I  had  been 
so  happy  in  Monroe  that  a  strong  instinct  in  me  re¬ 
belled  against  making  it  the  scene  of  penury,  grime 
and  chagrin.  Also,  a  wild  restlessness  often  came 
over  me  when  I  remembered  the  more  than  thousand 
miles  that  stretched  between  my  mother  and  myself. 
My  old  life  in  which  I  was  so  deeply  rooted,  my  own 
past  and  my  family’s,  which  I  had  come  to  see  with  a 

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new  warmth  and  sympathy  and  compassion — all  that 
seemed  terribly  far  away  and  almost  blotted  out  here. 
Thus  an  acute  peacelessness  stirred  always  at  the 
core  of  me.  At  all  events,  when  a  friend  in  the  de¬ 
partment  was  called  to  the  chairmanship  of  the  de¬ 
partment  in  Central  City  and  asked  me  to  go  with  him, 
I  accepted  the  offer,  though  not  without  doubt  and 
hesitation. 

Mary  and  I  raised  money  somehow,  went  for  a  few 
brief  weeks  to  Queenshaven  and  came  to  Central  City 
to  establish  ourselves.  That  establishment  was  slow 
and  difficult  and  never  complete.  We  had  both  been 
accustomed  to  richer  and  racier  forms  of  life  than  we 
found  in  that  characteristic  city  of  the  Middle  West,  to 
a  more  flexible  society,  a  freer  air.  But  we  were  de¬ 
stined  to  stay  there  for  six  years.  It  was  there  that  I 
watched  the  color  of  life  and  brooded  upon  death  and 
war  and  felt  the  pang  of  youth  leaving  my  heart ;  there 
I  wrote  several  books  that  brought  me  some  small  re¬ 
pute  and  sat  in  final  judgment  on  my  poetry.  There, 
too,  I  thought  at  one  time  that  I  had  learned  the  les¬ 
son  of  resignation.  .  .  . 


n 

I  applied  myself  to  the  business  of  education.  To 
what  we,  in  America,  call  the  higher  education  of  the 
most  democratic  type.  For  the  university  of  Central 
City  is  a  state  institution.  It  is  coeducational.  There 
are  between  five  and  six  thousand  students  and  a  fac¬ 
ulty  of  nearly  five  hundred.  The  university  is  divided 
into  eight  chief  colleges  to  all  but  one  of  which — the' 
college  of  medicine — a  graduation  certificate  from  a 

[154] 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


high  school  admits  the  student.  In  a  word,  any  boy  or 
girl  in  the  state  who  has  completed  a  high  school  course 
may  go  to  Central  City  and  learn  anything  within  the 
whole  realm  of  human  knowledge  which  may  seem  most 
effective  in  developing  the  individual.  These  state 
universities  represent  a  handsome  ideal.  If  the  teach¬ 
ing  were  not  propaganda,  if  the  teachers  were  not 
slaves.  ...  Yet  from  these  universities  fiery  things 
may  one  day  come.  Not  now.  Let  me  remember.  .  .  . 

I  stroll  on  the  campus  in  spring  as  I  have  done 
many  times.  The  students  are  not  disturbed  by  my 
approach,  for  they  stand  in  no  particular  awe  of  their 
professors.  Those  that  know  me  go  on  with  their  con¬ 
versation,  simply  including  me  in  it  if  I  stop.  They 
know  that  my  attitude  is  always  comradely.  I  watch 
their  faces.  There  is  not  a  vicious  face  on  the  campus. 
I  try  to  recall  one  among  the  hundreds  of  students  I 
have  taught.  I  cannot.  Dull  faces,  vacant  faces.  Not 
one  that  expresses  any  corruption  of  heart  and  mind. 
I  look  about  me  again  and  watch  for  one  face  that  be¬ 
trays  a  troubled  soul,  a  yearning  of  the  mind,  the 
touch  of  any  flame.  There  is  none.  How  many  such 
faces  have  I  seen  in  class-room  or  campus?  I  count 
them:  one,  two,  three — well,  four.  I  must  except  the 
handful  of  Russian  Jews.  Thought  and  emotion  are 
their  birthright.  But  my  young  Americans?  Many  of 
the  girls  are  dainty  and  comely.  The  peasant  is  oblit¬ 
erated  here  in  a  single  generation.  The  boys  have 
bright  and  cheery  faces — rather  more  flattened  and 
less  salient,  upon  the  whole,  than  the  girls’.  A  little 
coarser  in  modelling  and  tinting.  But  all,  all  incur¬ 
ably  trivial.  I  listen  to  their  talk.  It  is  of  games, 
parties,  examinations.  Never  of  the  contents  of  the 

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tests.  But  of  the  practical  fact  that  they  have  to  be 
faced.  Who  has  ever  heard  an  eager  argument  among 
these  students  on  any  of  the  subjects — art,  religion, 
economics,  sex — that  are  supposed  to  employ  the  minds 
of  men?  Who  has  ever  seen  them  keen  about  any¬ 
thing  except  (symbolically  speaking)  football  and 
fudge?  It  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  considered  rather 
bad  form  among  them  to  show  any  stirring  of  the  mind. 
It  is  considered  ‘  ‘  high-brow,  ’ ’  queer,  that  is  to  say — 
different,  personal  and  hence,  by  a  subtle  and  quite 
mad  implication  consoling  to  stupidity  and  emptiness 
— undemocratic. 

A  Continental  would  ask:  Why  do  they  go  to 
the  university?  In  Central  City  comparatively  few 
went  for  social  reasons.  An  extraordinary  proportion 
of  the  students  earn  their  maintenance  wholly  or  in 
part.  They  and  their  parents  make  real  sacrifices  in 
the  cause  of  education.  I  found  few  of  those  young 
men  and  women  really  slack  and  trifling.  There  was 
practically  no  disciplinary  problem.  The  students 
came  to  the  class-room  to  learn  something.  I  have 
seen  both  French  and  German  friends  speechless  be¬ 
fore  that  contradiction.  But  gradually  I  fought  my 
way  to  its  true  meaning  which  is  this:  To  the  “aver¬ 
age,  intelligent  American”  education,  for  which  he  is 
willing  to  deny  himself  and  pay  taxes,  means — skill, 
information — at  most,  accomplishment.  Skill  and 
knowledge  with  which  to  conquer  the  world  of  matter. 
It  does  not  mean  to  him  an  inner  change — the  putting 
on  of  a  new  man,  a  new  criterion  of  truth,  new  tastes 
and  other  values.  The  things  he  wants  at  the  univer¬ 
sity  are  finer  and  more  flexible  tools  for  the  economic 
war  which  he  calls  liberty.  And  like  tools  or  weapons 

[156] 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


they  are  external  to  him  and  are  dropped  when  the 
class-room  period  or  the  working  day  are  over.  He 
then  merges  himself  again  into  the  great  level  of  the 
democratic  mass  from  which  he  strives  to  be  distin¬ 
guished  only:  by  the  possession  of  those  sharper  tools. 
By  his  outlook  upon  life,  his  distinction  of  taste,  his 
finer  palate  for  truth  he  would  hesitate  to  be  differen¬ 
tiated  from  his  fellows.  He  would  seem  to  himself  in 
danger  of  being  a  “ high-brow’ ’  and  a  snob.  Occa¬ 
sionally  I  used  to  hear  a  gifted  student,  alive  to  the 
deeper  meaning  of  the  humanities,  passionately  dis¬ 
claim  the  values  he  had  himself  attained  in  a  blind 
terror  of  non-conformity.  And  I  heard  students  say, 
not  once  or  twice:  “But  the  majority  is  of  another 
opinion ;  I ’m  probably  wrong. 9  9  And  why  not  1  There 
was  the  President  of  the  university  in  Central  City 
who  led  the  way. 

The  man  has  been  on  my  mind  all  these  years.  And 
the  other  day  I  made  a  record  of  him  and  of  his  mean¬ 
ing. 

******** 

During  a  recent  crisis  of  our  national  history  a 
certain  distinguished  citizen  of  my  acquaintance — 
college  president,  insurance  magnate,  farmer,  and 
merchant — announced  with  an  indescribable  unction: 
“My  opinion  is  that  of  the  average  American.”  His 
broad  lips  tightened  and  his  eyes  became  stony.  He 
turned  up  his  sleeves,  figuratively  speaking,  to  enforce 
his  own  loyalty  upon  all  within  his  power.  For  loyalty 
is  what  he  called  it  and  had  always  called  it.  He  had 
been  loyal  to  his  college  and  to  his  college-team,  to  his 
party — the  Republican — his  state,  his  city  and  his 
church.  He  had  always  acted  from  within  a  group  and 

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had  always  identified  himself  with  that  group  *s  opinion 
of  itself  and  with  its  attitude  to  other  groups.  The 
qualities  of  these  other  groups  he  had  always  loyally 
excluded  from  his  experience.  He  had  never  permitted 
himself  really  to  see  the  rival  team,  the  competing  in¬ 
stitution,  or  the  other  party.  No  wonder  then  that  he 
swept  aside  with  a  muscular  gesture  a  suggestion  that 
he  should,  in  this  supreme  moment,  envisage  humanity 
as  at  least  including  the  alien  and  hostile  tribe.  Once 
somebody  asked  him:  “Then  you  interpret  loyalty 
to  a  social  group — college,  church,  city,  nation — as  an 
identification  of  one’s  own  opinion  with  the  majority 
opinion  held  within  that  group  at  the  quite  arbitrary 
moment  when  the  group  chooses  to  apply  a  test?”  He 
became  truculent  and  oratorical.  The  question  had 
simply  not  reached  his  mind.  His  very  conception  of 
loyalty  had  involved  the  submersion  of  his  reason.  He 
was  impenetrable. 

And  yet  to  my  own  knowledge,  in  the  ordinary,  con¬ 
crete  matters  of  daily  living  this  man  was  both  wise 
and  just.  The  old  experiences  of  the  race  that  had 
recurred  within  his  own  life  he  had  grasped  firmly, 
and  concerning  these  his  judgment  was  liberal  and 
ripe.  He  had  been  poor  in  his  earlier  years  and  his 
underpaid  colleagues  found  him  to  be  both  understand¬ 
ing  and  helpful;  he  had  been  married  several  times 
and  had  a  saner  insight  than  many  supposed  into  the 
intricate  relations  of  men  and  women.  He  had,  in  all 
such  matters,  an  occasional  bluntness  of  speech  that 
proved  him  to  be  free  from  the  grosser  delusions  of  his 
fellows.  Wherever  his  personal  experience  guided  his 
judgment,  that  judgment  was  sound.  On  all  other  mat¬ 
ters  he  talked  like  a  child  or  a  madman  and,  at  critical 

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THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


moments,  fell  back  upon  the  mass  judgment  of  men 
whose  opportunities  for  experience  were  even  more 
restricted  than  his  own.  This  process  he  called  “loy¬ 
alty”  and  it  gave  him  the  mien  and  temper  of  an  in¬ 
quisitor.  In  his  personal  life  he  experienced  and  rea¬ 
soned  from  experience;  the  motives  of  his  political 
actions  were  savage  and  confused. 

It  seems  to  me  that  this  man’s  character  is  a  sym¬ 
bol.  Judgments  formed  without  experience  are  vain  and 
in  the  void.  But  mankind  has  evidently  not  the  power 
of  transmitting  experiences  that  do  not  repeat  them¬ 
selves  within  the  actual  life  of  each  generation.  The 
simplest  know  that  fire  burns  and  snow  chills  and  even 
that  thrift  makes  for  order.  But  so  soon  as  intervals 
elapse  between  experiences  they  are  either  obliterated 
or  transformed  into  romance.  The  ages  pass  and  war 
follows  war.  Mankind  has  not  learned  that  the  blow 
returned  does  not  heal  the  pain  of  the  blow  suffered, 
neither  does  it  touch  the  impulse  that  aimed  the  blow, 
nor  cure  the  suffering  from  which  that  impulse  leaped, 
nor  make  order  of  the  moral  chaos  in  wThich  the  suf¬ 
fering  was  born.  It  follows  that  all  judgments  in  re¬ 
gard  to  war  and  peace,  all  corporate  or  collective  judg¬ 
ments  in  moments  of  crisis  and  on  matters  that  have 
not  been  constant  factors  in  the  lives  of  the  individuals 
who  compose  the  group  are  wholly  and  necessarily 
worthless.  You  may  call  an  acquiescence  in  such  judg¬ 
ments  by  ringing  names — teamwork,  loyalty,  patriot¬ 
ism.  It  remains  a  savage  thing  and  the  chief  enemy 
in  our  path. 

What  are  we  to  do?  Have  not  even  historians, 
warders  of  the  rarer  experiences  of  the  race,  failed  us 
at  crises?  The  answer  lies  here,  so  at  least  it  seems  to 

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me ;  we  can  not  change  the  nature  of  man,  but  we  can 
affect  his  mood.  Christianity  did  that  for  some  cen¬ 
turies,  the  ideal  of  economic  co-operation  does  so  to¬ 
day.  We  can  attack  the  concept  of  loyalty  as  excluding 
inquiry  and  experience;  we  can  seek  to  merge  the 
mind’s  freedom  with  its  own  self-respect.  We  can  be¬ 
gin  humbly.  When  the  leader  of  the  school  foot-ball 
team  announces  certain  victory  based  on  nothing  but 
his  craving  to  show  the  superiority  of  his  particular 
group,  his  teachers  can  explain  the  spiritual  vulgarity 
of  that  impulse,  insist  on  an  imaginative  grasp  of  the 
rival  team’s  likeness  to  his  own  and  thus  temper  the 
ferocity  of  the  merely  competitive  instincts.  We  can 
deprecate  all  forms  of  “booming”  and  “boosting”; 
we  can  point  out  a  humility  which  is  also  a  nobler  form 
of  pride.  We  can  substitute  a  sense  of  personal  and 
inner  worth  for  the  misery  and  emptiness  that  fling  the 
individual  into  blind  group-action  to  satisfy  his  primi¬ 
tive  will  to  superiority  and  power.  We  can  show  that 
judgment  without  experience  will  wreck  a  society  as 
surely  as  it  will  wreck  an  individual,  and  that  loyalty 
to  the  humblest  truth  a  man  has  found  for  himself 
is  better  than  to  cheer  whole  acres  of  bunting  or  to 

wear  a  gaudy  ribbon  in  his  coat. 

##*##*#* 

Our  students,  then,  came  to  the  university  not  to 
find  truth,  but  to  be  engineers  or  farmers,  doctors  or 
teachers.  They  did  not  want  to  be  different  men  and 
women.  It  is  in  conformity  with  this  popular  purpose 
that  the  elective  system  of  studies  has  been  pushed 
back  from  the  college  into  the  high-school  and  that 
state  universities  have  been  compelled,  by  actual  legis¬ 
lation  is  some  cases,  to  admit  high-school  graduates 

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THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 

simply  by  virtue  of  a  definite  amount  of  study  with¬ 
out  distinction  of  content  or  quality.  The  recent  intro¬ 
duction  of  psychological  tests  when  it  is  not,  as  in 
certain  private  universities  of  the  East,  a  weapon 
against  radicals  and  Jews,  can  be  made  to  function  in 
precisely  the  same  wav.  And  I  do  not  say  that,  given 
the  aim,  the  system  is  not  practical.  If  the  aim  of  edu¬ 
cation  is  merely  to  gain  rough,  useful  tools  for  striv¬ 
ing  with  the  world  of  matter,  and  to  gain  them  rap¬ 
idly — the  system  works.  I  suppose  that  these  state 
universities  do  turn  out  very  fair  engineers  and  farm¬ 
ers  and  veterinarians.  But  when  their  job  leaves 
these  men  free  they  are  but  little  different  from  people 
who  have  not  gone  to  college.  They  go  to  foolish  plays, 
read  silly  magazines  and  fight  for  every  poisonous 
fallacy  in  politics,  religion  and  conduct.  A  professor 
of  geology  in  the  university  of  Central  City  was  pub¬ 
licly  converted  by  Billy  Sunday.  The  fact  that  he  was 
not  thereupon  privately  1 ‘ fired,’ 9  that  he  was  still 
thought  capable  of  teaching  his  science,  symbolized  the 
situation  in  its  naked  horror. 

in 

One  or  two  of  my  colleagues  and  I  were  wont,  in 
our  interpretation  of  literature  and  thought,  to  speak 
freely  in  the  class-room  of  those  deep  and  serious  mat¬ 
ters  concerning  which  it  befits  men  and  women  to 
think  all  their  lives.  A  few  students — a  very  few — 
followed  our  leading.  A  number,  also  small,  offered 
a  sullen  resistance.  The  majority  considered  us  inter¬ 
esting,  stimulating,  a  little  quaint,  and  regarded  these 
lectures  as  pleasant  exercitations  which  had  no  con- 

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tact  with  reality.  A  student,  for  example,  would  take 
advanced  courses  in  philosophy  and  literature  and  re¬ 
turn,  with  no  sense  of  discrepancy,  to  the  formularies 
of  a  third-rate  conventicle.  Another,  a  girl  with  a  face 
full  of  intelligence  and  vivid  sweetness,  “ majored”  in 
French  literature.  She  knew  the  language  well  and 
had  read  widely.  But  Montaigne  and  Anatole  France 
never  spoke  to  her.  Her  real  interest  was  in  Y.  W. 
C.  A.  work  and  she  was  anxious  to  become  a  mission¬ 
ary.  Her  one  desire  was  to  save  the  followers  of 
Buddha  through  the  doctrines  of  the  Fifth  Street  Bap¬ 
tist  Church. 

This  phenomenon  was  a  recurrent  one.  So  let  me 
repeat :  Our  people  do  not  believe  in  education  at  all — 
if  education  means  a  liberation  of  the  mind  or  a  height¬ 
ened  consciousness  of  the  historic  culture  of  mankind. 
Philosophy  and  morals  are  taken  care  of  by  the  Fifth 
Street  Baptist  Church.  College  is  to  fit  you  to  do 
things — build  bridges,  cure  diseases,  teach  French.  It 
is  not  supposed  to  help  you  to  be. 

Convictions  on  all  ultimate  questions  our  students 
brought  with  them  ready-made  or  continued  deliber¬ 
ately  to  draw  from  sources  other  than  ourselves.  And 
these  convictions  constitute  the  most  rigid  and  the 
palest  inner  culture  by  which,  I  suppose,  any  society 
has  ever  tried  to  live.  I  wonder  whether  I  can  de¬ 
scribe  this  inner  culture  objectively.  I  know  it  almost 
tangibly.  For  years  I  read  it  in  the  eyes  of  my  stu¬ 
dents,  noted  it  in  all  their  reactions,  bruised  myself 
daily  against  its  dull  and  vicious  edges.  If  I  under¬ 
stood  this  ethos  rightly,  it  holds  that  the  aim  and  end 
of  life  is  happiness  in  terms  of  blameless  prosperity. 
It  very  sincerely  distrusts  intensity  or  distinction  of 

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THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


mind  and  carelessness  of  material  success.  These 
things  make  for  error  and  do  not  make  for  prosperity. 
It  does  not  believe  in  virtue — virtus,  power,  the  crea¬ 
tive  instinct  in  the  intellectual  or  moral  world — but 
wholly  in  such  negative  commandments  as  will  con¬ 
tribute  to  honest  material  well-being.  You  must  not 
drink  fermented  liquors,  you  must  not  criticize  your 
neighbor  harshly,  you  must  not — except  in  business 
where  the  contrary  is  the  supreme  law — act  selfishly; 
you  must  not  doubt  that  America  has  achieved  an  un¬ 
exampled  freedom  nor  that  the  majority  is  right — 
‘ 4  they  say:  ‘the  majority  rules  *  ” — and  hence  you  must 
shun  non-conformity  to  the  fundamental  beliefs  of  the 
majority  as  undemocratic  and  un-American.  Also  as 
un-Christian.  For  the  Churches  have  substituted  pro¬ 
hibition  for  saintliness  and  a  state  of  economic  com¬ 
petition  in  which  blamelessness  achieves  prosperity 
for  the  kingdom  of  God. 

How,  it  will  be  asked,  can  such  convictions — so 
hum-drum,  so  middle-aged,  so  unheroic — armor  as 
with  steel  the  impassioned  spirit  of  youth?  Alas,  youth 
in  Central  City  had  no  rebellions  or  curiosities  or 
yearnings.  Young  things  there  were  not  wild  things. 
Adolescents  neither  wrote  verse  nor  broke  idols.  A 
thoughtful  physician  assured  me  that  nine-tenths  of 
those  young  Americans  with  their  untroubled  eyes  and 
steady  gaze  were  undersexed.  And  I  found  a  weighty 
confirmation  in  this:  it  was  practically  impossible,  in 
studying  literature,  to  get  an  emotional  response. 
Those  students  had  no  emotional  experience.  Their 
inner  lives  were  supremely  poverty-stricken.  Nothing 
in  them  cried  out.  In  addition,  their  morality  is  one 
of  restraint  and  negation.  So  that  whatever  feeble 

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sparks  of  personality  might  smoulder  here  and  there 
are  smothered  by  the  morals  and  beliefs  of  the  mass- 
life.  Thus  personality  itself  came  to  seem  almost 
wicked  and  propriety  synonymous  with  goodness.  If 
they  could  live  so  quietly  in  a  moral  world  which 
seemed  to  have  no  contact  with  reality,  it  was  because 
reality  in  them  had  little  sharpness  or  insistence.  They 
had  become  what  home  and  church  and  school  wanted 
them  to  be.  The  ideal  of  conformity,  of  colorlessness, 
of  taking  the  world  to  be  a  tame  and  shop-keeping  sort 
of  affair  had  been  achieved.  .  .  . 

Democracy  was — was  it  not?— -to  set  the  individual 
free,  to  make  room  in  the  world  for  all  types  of  per¬ 
sonality,  to  make  life  comradely,  vivid,  flexible?  My 
students  had  one  positive  instinct.  It  was  quiet  and 
it  never  became  cruel.  But  it  wras  unbreakable:  the 
instinct  of  intolerance.  They  were  quietly  intolerant 
of  all  qualitative  distinctions — even  in  themselves.  I 
said  to  a  class  of  seniors:  “High-brow  is  usually  a 
term  applied  by  ignorant  people  to  those  whose  finer 
qualities  and  insights  they  should  seek  to  emulate.’ 9 
My  class  laughed  in  its  pleasant,  courteous  way.  An 
hour  later  in  the  library  I  witnessed  this  scene.  A 
blond,  tousle-headed  lad,  my  chief  comfort  during  a 
certain  year,  was  trying  to  sell  copies  of  a  magazine 
which,  with  the  help  of  the  Russian  Jewish  students, 
he  had  tentatively  established.  The  magazine  was 
crude  enough.  But  it  was  alive.  There  was  verse  in 
it,  unrhythmed  and  gawky,  but  hopeful,  and  prose  with 
some  close  thinking  in  it  and  a  social  outlook  and  a 
breath  of  the  future.  My  friend  Jim  smiled  at  me 
and  shouted:  “Buy  the  second  number  of  The  Torch!” 
One  of  my  seniors  passed,  the  daughter  of  a  federal 

[164] 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


judge.  She  shook  her  smooth,  comely  head  with  a  self- 
satisfied  little  grin:  “Too  high-brow  for  me!”  There 
was  an  inimitably  characteristic  little  upward  inflec¬ 
tion  on  the  last  word.  She  bought  The  Sly-Cat — the 
students’  comic  paper — you  may  be  sure,  and  laughed 
over  its  unspeakable  inanities.  It  was  natural,  you 
say.  The  act — -yes.  But  the  spirit  of  the  act!  She 
refused  The  Torch  with  self-righteous  triumph  and 
read  The  Sly-Cat  with  a  solid  sense  of  doing  the  right 
thing — because  it  was  the  ordinary  thing.  She  had 
made  a  fetish  of  commonness — except  in  the  matter 
of  money  and  clothes  and  motor-cars.  So  had  they 
all.  .  .  . 

IV 

If  they  had  met  a  solid  front  when  they  came  to 
Central  City,  had  met  detachment,  resistance,  the 
critical  and  distinguishing  mind!  But  the  university 
caters  to  the  High  Schools  and  these  to  the  grade 
schools  and  the  grade  schools  to  what  the  hardware- 
man  and  the  undertaker  think  their  Johns  and  Wes¬ 
leys  and  Ruths  and  Helens  ought  to  learn.  Here  is 
the  incurable  dilemma  of  democracy.  A  democrati© 
community,  in  order  to  be  free,  wise,  self-governed, 
needs  minds  that  are  so — -minds  that  will  think  closely, 
resist  delusions,  discriminate  and  really  will  and 
choose.  An  historic  and  philosophic  culture  is,  in  a 
democracy,  no  longer  a  luxury  or  an  accomplishment. 
It  is  a  bitter  necessity.  Lacking  it,  the  group-life  is 
at  the  mercy  of  every  odious  folly,  of  every  brazen 
demagogue,  of  every  machine-boss,  of  every  catch¬ 
word.  .  .  .  But  "how  shall  we  persuade  our  masters, 
the  hardwareman  and  the  undertaker,  that  what  John 

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and  Wesley  need  for  good  citizenship,  for  honest  citi¬ 
zenship,  in  the  plain  and  literal  sense,  is  not  more  skill, 
but  history,  philosophy,  economics,  literature — a  spir¬ 
itual  background,  a  sense  of  values,  a  vision  of  man’s 
life,  of  “Florence,  Weimar,  Athens,  Rome?”  It  can 
not  he  done.  The  sage  can  he  disinterested  and  so  can 
the  proletarian.  The  undertaker  and  the  hardwareman. 
striving  always  to  he  managers  of  a  casket  trust  or 
a  plow  share  monopoly,  are  hopelessly  committed  to 
the  economic  and  intellectual  status  quo.  Hence  a 
bourgeois  democracy  is  rigid.  This  is  its  dilemma. 
Whoever  possesses  or  hopes  to  possess  more  than  he 
needs,  more  than  a  house,  a  garden,  a  room  full  of 
books,  is  doomed  to  keeping  static  the  order  in  which 
he  lives. 

Well,  in  our  present  system  of  education  the  de¬ 
crees  of  the  hardwareman  and  the  undertaker  have 
been  carried  out.  Thus,  in  Central  City,  there  are 
charming  buildings  for  the  school  of  veterinarv  medi- 
cine,  handsome  and  commodious  ones  for  agriculture 
and  engineering,  domestic  science,  chemistry  and  for¬ 
estry.  The  ancient  arts  and  studies  of  man  that  give 
vision  and  wisdom  are  squeezed  in  somehow.  The  stu¬ 
dents  see  all  that  and  it  falls  in  with  the  notions  they 
already  have  of  what  is  useful  and  what  is  not.  They 
tolerate  the  required  Freshman  English  because  of  a 
dim  something  connected  with  business  letters  and  ad¬ 
vertising  “dope.”  Their  spoken  English  remains,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  hopelessly  corrupt.  They  used  to 
elect  German  because  a  “lot  of  science  is  written  in 
German.”  The  war  rather  eased  them  of  that  dis¬ 
cipline.  Spanish',  more  recently,  is  chosen  on  account 
of  a  vague  notion  about  the  South  American  trade.  The 

[166] 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


proof  of  the  reality  of  these  motives  is  that  in  Central 
City  there  was  never  more  than  one  small  section  of 
Italian.  No  science  there  that  they  know  of,  no  busi¬ 
ness  either.  The  advanced  courses  in  language  and 
literature,  including  English,  are  filled  with  girls  who 
can  afford  the  agreeable  and  the  useless.  Greek  is 
dead.  Latin  is  still  studied  by  a  handful  of  young 
women  who  teach  it  in  High  School  because  ‘ ‘there’s 
so  much  Latin  in  English  and  so  many  scientific  terms 
are  Latin. ”  The  reason  of  spiritual  poltroonry.  In 
another  generation  the  classics  of  the  English  tongue 
will  be  as  obsolete  as  a  cuneiform  inscription. 

“A  new  Peneus  rolls  his  fountains 
Against  the  evening  star!” 

Think  of  that  and  the  Middle  Western  student  mind. 
It  is  a  murmur  from  an  unimagined  and  unimaginable 
world.  The  hardwareman  and  the  undertaker  have 
triumphed.  And  their  triumph  is  sustained  in  the 
courts  of  last  resort.  The  Kockefeller  Institute  has 
made  the  most  brazen  attack  on  the  humanities  on 
record.  No  wonder!  What  is  wanted  is  the  skilled 
hand  and  the  unresisting  mind.  A  democracy  of  clever 
workers  incapable  of  close  thinking,  ignorant  of 
the  experience  of  the  race,  can  be  dragged  from  one 
delusion  to  another,  given  the  shadow  for  the  sub¬ 
stance,  brow-beaten  and  enslaved.  Yet  it  can,  all  the 
while,  be  gulled  into  a  belief  in  its  own  freedom.  Men 
must  have  heroes.  The  masters  of  steel  and  oil  and 
their  henchmen  know  that.  But  Milton  and  Shelley, 
Kant  and  Goethe  are  dangerous  heroes.  Edison  is  a 
safe  one.  ...  We  used  to  argue  that  a  civilized  mind 
would  make  even  an  engineer  a  better  engineer.  But 

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the  capitalistic  state  does  not  want  excellent  engineers 
quite  so  much  as  it  wants  many  engineers.  It  wants 
degrees  and  college  graduates  by  the  thousand.  .  .  . 

To  keep  what  little  hope  I  had,  what  impulse 
toward  my  work,  I  found  it  necessary  to  stop  going 
to  commencement.  One  year  we  had  eight  hundred 
graduates;  we  conferred  eight  hundred  degrees.  The 
long  line  passed  in  cap  and  gown.  Seventy  per  cent 
should  never  have  gotten  here.  Seventy  per  cent  could 
stand  no  test — not  the  simplest — in  fundamental  think¬ 
ing  or  judging  or  the  elements  of  human  knowledge. 
But  the  system  is  not  a  sieve;  it’s  a  cornucopia.  .  .  . 
The  faces  .  .  .  the  faces  .  .  .  unformed,  unstamped 
by  any  effort  of  thought.  And  then  the  band  and  the 
ribbons  and  the  smug,  fond  parents  and  the  revolting 
orators — cheap  clergymen  as  a  rule — who  shout  that 
this  institution  is  sending  forth  into  life  the  trained 
and  chosen  heralds  of  civilization.  .  .  .  Trained  and 
chosen!  Good  Lord!  Even  with  our  enforced  slack¬ 
ness,  how  did  most  of  these  raw  young  fools  slide 
through?  And  since  they  did  how,  in  the  name  of  our 
as,  I  once  thought,  common  nature,  did  they  escape 
after  four  mortal  years  so  uncontaminated  by  wisdom 
and  understanding? 


v 

It  is  clear  that  I  have  omitted  so  far  what  was  a 
powerful  factor  in  our  situation — a  faculty  of  nearly 
five-hundred.  Could  this  group  of  men  affect  noth¬ 
ing?  Could  it  in  no  sense  lead  the  democracy  toward 
better  impulses  and  stricter  standards?  There  was  a 
time  when  I  would  have  said  yes.  But  the  war  came 

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THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


and,  as  we  shall  see — it  is  indeed  notorious — these  gen¬ 
tlemen  went  to  pieces.  But  even  before  the  war  the 
trouble  with  the  American  professorate  was  its  cow¬ 
ardice  and  its  effeminacy  of  mind.  Two  men  there 
were  on  that  campus  in  Central  City  who  in  public 
writing  and  private  speech  stood  four-square  against 
the  pulpiness  and  muddled  utilitarianism  of  our  educa¬ 
tional  machine.  Just  two — my  friend,  the  professor 
of  philosophy  and  I.  Others  agreed  with  us  quite  sin¬ 
cerely.  We  prodded  them  in  vain.  My  friend  is  of 
British  extraction  and  I  of  Jewish.  We  were  free  of 
that  infinitely  curious,  characteristic  American  trait— 
the  easy-going,  kindly,  disastrous  dislike  of  clean-cut 
individual  convictions.  I  emphasize  the  word  indi¬ 
vidual.  When  the  war  came  these  lambs  roared  like 
lions.  But  then  they  roared  in  herds.  In  the  old  days 
they  had  no  convictions.  If  they  had  them  they  would 
not  express  them.  Because,  observe,  if  you  have  a 
conviction  and  express  it,  you  are  by  that  very  fact 
contradicting  someone  who  thinks  otherwise.  And 
suppose — though  he  hasn’t  whispered  on  the  subject 
— that  other  one  is  the  dean  of  your  college!  You 
might  “hurt  his  feelings!”  Let  the  republic  slide  to 
the  devil.  But  don’t  let  us  hurt  anyone’s  feelings. 
My  friend  and  I  used  often  to  feel  almost  truculent 
when  we  were  barely  self-respecting.  Our  colleagues 
were  as  tepid  as  weak  tea.  ...  At  the  faculty  lan¬ 
guage  and  literature  club  no  one  ever  exercised  sharp 
criticism  of  another’s  paper  or  report.  Truth?  Sci¬ 
ence?  It  takes  “aliens”  to  get  excited  over  such 
things.  And  at  nine- thirty  they  grew  restive.  They 
were  expected  at  home.  The  consummate  terror  in 
which  they  stood  of  their  uninteresting  wives  gave  the 

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last  touch  to  the  picture  of  their  moral  and  intellectual 
futility. 

There  are  deeper  reasons  for  the  lack  of  intellectual 
hardihood  that  marks  our  university  faculties.  Who 
and  what  are  these  American  professors!  They  are, 
almost  all,  honorable  and  high-minded  gentlemen. 
They  try,  in  a  feeble  way,  to  live  up  to  the  best  light 
they  have,  although,  as  Arnold  said  of  their  ancestors, 
they’re  criminally  careless  about  inquiring  whether 
that  light  is  not  darkness.  But  they  are  not  men 
driven  by  an  inner  urgency.  They  are  not  the  servants 
of  an  idea  or  of  a  passion  of  the  soul.  Most  of  them 
could  easily  have  been  something  else.  They  went  into 
teaching  either  because  they  had  a  pleasant  taste  for 
learning  and  no  particular  taste  for  anything  else; 
or  because  they  were  timid  and  of  a  retiring  nature 
and  didn’t  like  the  rough  and  tumble  of  the  business 
world.  Or,  because — in  an  appalling  number  of  cases 
— they  simply  drifted  into  the  academic  life.  Thus 
there  is  among  them  little  intensity  or  power,  little 
courage  or  independence,  much  pinch-beck  dignity  and 
lust  for  administrative  twaddle. 

The  argument  used  to  be  current  on  that  campus, 
as  it  is  on  every  campus,  that  strong  men  do  not  enter 
the  academic  profession  because  there  are  no  prizes  in 
it.  We  were,  it  is  true,  wretchedly  poor.  That  pov¬ 
erty  has  increased  year  by  year.  Nor  were  we  re¬ 
warded  by  any  great  dignity  of  social  standing  or  ap¬ 
proval.  Yet  the  argument  was  and  remains  but  a 
shallow  one.  The  youth  whose  whole  being  is  one  con¬ 
suming  and  unanswerable  passion  for  literature  or 
science  or  philosophy,  who  shrinks  at  the  very  thought 
of  business  or  money-getting,  cannot  be  deterred  from 

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THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


the  academic  life  by  its  slender  rewards.  For  he  seeks 
and  chooses  that  life  in  order  to  live  at  all.  He  must 
choose  it  at  whatever  salary.  No;  the  “strong  man  in 
business’ ’  argument  is  a  fallacy.  That  strong  man 
could  never  have  been  the  academic  strong  man.  His 
capability  of  being  what  he  is  is  proof  enough.  He 
did  not,  by  an  unescapable  compulsion,  love  best  the 
eternal  things  of  the  mind.  If  he  did,  he  couldn’t  be 
spending  his  time  in  anything  so  trivial  as  making 
money  by  multiplying  or  exchanging  things.  .  .  .  The 
best  men  in  the  university  are  those  who  couldn’t  pos¬ 
sibly  have  been  anything  else.  They  are  the  ones  whom 
a  wise  polity  would  not  condemn  to  humiliating  penury. 
They  are  the  brains  and  the  souls  and  the  hope  of  the 
land.  The  mere  teachers,  who  might  as  easily  have 
been  bank-officials  or  commission-merchants,  are  not  to 
be  pitied.  Let  them  be  other  things  for  a  few  academic 
generations.  Then  perhaps  the  chosen  servants  of  the 
eternal  life  will  come  into  their  own.  .  .  .  But  try  to 
urge  that  on  a  given  campus.  Do  you  mean  So  and 
So  should  go?  Exactly!  But  he  is  such  a  good  hus¬ 
band!  Which  means  that  the  poor  man  is  not  only  an 
ass  but  a  feebly  uxorious  ass.  .  .  . 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  majority  of  those 
who  drift  into  the  academic  life  are  dreary  specialists 
with,  angular,  strawy  minds.  They  often  teach  their 
subjects  competently  in  the  narrow,  technical  sense, 
but  without  richness  or  savor  or  human  and  philo¬ 
sophical  implications.  Yet  that  is  what  the  American 
student  supremely  needs.  He  needs  the  electric  touch 
of  personality;  he  gets  uncoordinated  information. 
But  many  of  my  colleagues  really  had  a  kind  of  Phar¬ 
isaism  in  this  matter.  Their  attitude  was :  this  is  my 

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specialty;  I  am  master  of  it;  I  don’t  pretend  to  more 
and  distrust  those  who  do.  In  the  early  years — I  grew 
wary  later — a  colleague  once  asked  me :  ‘ 4  What ’s  your 
special  line?”  He  knew,  of  course,  that  I  was  teach¬ 
ing  German.  He  meant :  do  I  specialize  in  the  sixteenth 
century  or  the  eighteenth,  the  Middle  High  German 
lyric  or  the  Renaissance  drama.  I  wasn’t  thinking  of 
his  psychology  and  answered:  “Oh,  in  some  moods 
I’m  sorry  I’m  not  teaching  English,  but  I  find  German 
literature  more  and  more  sustaining  as  time  goes  on. 
Of  course,  there  are  advantages  in — ”  The  good  man’s 
look  of  cool  and  incredulous  amazement  cut  my  inno¬ 
cent  outpourings  short. 


VI 

The  actual  business  of  teaching  was  often  dreary 
enough.  Largely  because  there  was  no  proper  division 
of  work.  I  taught  a  section  of  beginners  and  conducted 
a  seminar  for  candidates  for  the  doctorate.  I  taught 
intermediate  classes.  In  a  word,  I  was  high  school 
teacher,  college  teacher,  university  professor  on  the 
same  day.  I  had  constantly  to  practice  and  apply  to 
my  subject  three  utterly  different  methods.  The  wear 
and  tear  of  that  was  great.  It  made  against  concen¬ 
tration  and  harmony  and  hence  effectiveness.  There 
was  also  a  terrible  amount  of  sheer,  heart-breaking 
waste.  The  elective  system  permits  a  student  to  take 
just  enough  of  a  subject  to  illumine  his  special  and 
general  ignorance.  But  I  dare  say  that  a  qualitative 
differentiation  of  work  for  the  professors  or  compul¬ 
sion  upon  the  student  to  master  something  would  both 
have  been  considered  undemocratic  and  are  so  consid- 

[172] 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


ered  now.  When  I  nsed  to  present  such  considerations 
my  friends  often  thought  me  a  pessimist,  one  who  sees 
life  with  a  jaundiced  eye.  They  had  an  eighteenth 
centuryish  kind  of  cheer.  This  is  the  best  of  all  pos¬ 
sible  worlds.  In  our  easy-going,  democratic  way  we 
shall  muddle  through.  Through?  Yes.  But  in  what 
direction?  To  what  goal?  Well,  here  we  are  in  1921. 
The  best  civilization  on  the  old  Continent  is  dying. 
We  are  fat  and  also  the  reactionaries,  the  Black  Hun¬ 
dreds,  of  the  world.  My  friends  in  Central  City  are,  I 
swear,  capable  of  not  knowing  or  not  permitting  them¬ 
selves  to  know  either,  but  of  still  trying  to  muddle 
through  with  optimistic  phrases.  .  .  . 

Yet  my  very  pessimism  sustained  me,  urged  me  on 
to  new  efforts,  to  the  daily  service  of  the  cause.  How¬ 
ever  tired  I  was,  however  discouraged,  once  in  the 
class-room  I  felt  an  energy  that  never  quite  failed  me. 
There  might  have  been  on  that  day  one  student — if 
but  one - who  heard  me  in  the  deeper  sense  and  ac¬ 

cepted,  however  imperfectly,  the  spirit  of  my  teaching 
— one  who  at  least  in  the  years  to  come  would  realize 
through  memory  that  once  in  his  youth  he  had  heard 
a  summons  from  the  common  and  the  mean,  a  protest 
against  the  obliteration  of  all  freer  and  finer  values,  a 
call  to  become  a  member  of  that  small  company  of  elect 
spirits  who  have  been,  in  every  age,  the  guardians  of 
the  torch  of  the  true  humanities.  For  it  is  by  its  pro¬ 
duction  of  such  a  company  of  spirits  that  a  civilization 
stands  or  falls.  Number  and  size  are  a  monstrous  de¬ 
lusion,  machinery  is  a  snare,  wealth  is  trash.  ...  A 
society  which,  as  a  whole,  venerates  Edison  more  than 
Emerson  is  in  danger  of  becoming  a  society  of  damned 
souls  in  the  only  sense  in  which  damnation  has  a 

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meaning.  What  a  platitude.  Only,  unfortunately,  it 
isn’t  a  platitude  in  America — it’s  heretical  nonsense. 
In  America,  observe!  Not  among  those  Swedish  and 
German  and  Levantine  and  Irish  critics  and  writers  in 
New  York  whose  influence  upon  the  civilization  of  their 
native  land  is  beginning  to  trouble  the  patriots.  .  .  . 

In  my  moments  of  half-humorous  despair  I  used  to 
tell  myself  that  my  fine  phrases  did,  at  least,  square 
with  the  brutal  fact.  There  never  was  more  than  one 
such  student  to  be  found.  Not  in  a  class,  but  in  a  year. 
So  and  so  many  young  women,  of  course,  went  through 
the  gesture  of  understanding.  But  the  gestures  were 
quite  like  those  they  made  at  receptions — elegant  con¬ 
ventions  by  which  to  hide  the  true  state  of  their  minds. 
Or  else  their  reactions  were  sentimental.  After  an 
energetic  lecture  on  the  ethical  problem  in  Faust,  an 
immense,  buxom,  blank-faced  young  woman  came  lan¬ 
guishing  to  my  desk :  “Ok,  Professor,  you  give  me  such 
a  beautiful  feeling!”  Such  moments  were  discourag¬ 
ing.  They  took  the  wind  out  of  one’s  sails.  I  used  to 
cherish  the  ambition  to  teach  at  an  institution  for  men 
only.  .  .  . 

Yet  I  shall  not  end  this  chapter  upon  so  negative  a 
note.  As  I  said  at  the  beginning:  My  students  were 
very  loyal  to  me.  Whether  they  understood  me  or 
not — usually  they  didn’t — whether  I  was  teaching 
them  language  or  literature,  they  felt  that  I  was  bent 
upon  some  business  in  which  their  souls  were  somehow 
really  concerned.  That  much  nearly  all  of  them  saw; 
for  that  perception  they  were  nearly  all  a  little  grate¬ 
ful.  So  that,  in  addition  to  conveying  a  certain  amount 
of  knowledge,  I  at  least  did  this  during  my  seven  years 
as  a  college  teacher:  I  caused  a  number  of  young 

[174] 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  EDUCATION 


Americans  of  the  Middle  West  to  regard  with  liking 
and  respect  one  who  was  frankly  merciless  to  the 
popular  fallacies  and  the  mass  delusions  amid  which 
they  had  to  live. 

I  earned  my  small  salary  upon  austerer  terms  than 
most  of  my  colleagues.  I  gave  myself,  not  only  my 
knowledge  of  German.  Nor  was  I  idle  during  my  brief 
leisure,  full  as  that  leisure  often  was  of  an  intense 
anguish  of  body  and  mind.  I  wrote  several  books  that 
brought  me  little  money  but  carried  the  name  of  my 
university  where  it  had  not  been  heard  before  and 
also  visibly  caused  juster  and  truer  views  of  the  sub¬ 
jects  with  which  they  dealt  to  prevail.  I  was,  in  brief, 
a  citizen  passionately  and  fruitfully  concerned  for  the 
welfare  of  a  society  which  had  always  received  him 
grudgingly  and  half-heartedly,  but  which  he  had  never¬ 
theless  come  to  regard  as  his  own.  And  because  I 
would  not  join  in  a  cosmic  orgy  of  stupidity  and  slan¬ 
der,  of  foul  myth  and  blood-soaked  ritual  I  was  finally 
held  to  be  in  that  place  of  my  activity  a  meaner  citizen 
than  any  owner  of  leathern  lungs  and  brazen  lips.  .  .  . 

A  friend  told  me  the  other  day  that  my  name  is  a 
household  word  among  the  very  cultured  of  Central 
City.  They  regard  me  and  my  work  as,  in  an 
intimate  and  delightful  sense,  their  own.  ...  I 
didn’t  contradict  the  tepid  little  lady.  Those  people 
are  capable  of  saying  and  feeling  just  that.  The  war 
is  over.  My  reputation  is  growing.  Why  shouldn’t 
they  get  a  little  pleasure  and  self-importance  out  of  it? 
They  have  forgotten  the  year  of  grace  1917  when  no 
hand  but  one  was  stretched  out  to  help  me,  because  I 
would  not  be  a  hypocrite  and  could  not  be  a  fool. 

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They’re  Anglo-Americans — these  good  people.  They 
are  quite  sincere.  They  do  not  know  the  difference 
between  truth  and  falsehood.  If  ever  I  visit  Central 
City  they  are  capable  of  giving  a  banquet — with  grape- 
juice — in  my  honor.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


The  Colob  of  Life 

I 

In  the  seventh  month  of  the  first  year  of  onr  stay 
in  Central  City  there  came  a  special  delivery  letter 
from  my  father.  He  wrote  that  I  must  come  home  for 
a  few  days  at  once,  because  my  mother  had  to  undergo 
an  operation  which  could  not  be  delayed.  ...  I  want 
to  describe  these  events  without  reticence.  Literature 
has  a  way  of  veiling  pain — of  talking  about  it.  We 
should  look  at  pain  as  it  is.  If  we  are  less  furtive 
about  it,  perhaps  we  shall  spend  more  of  our  strength 
trying  to  mend  life,  less  trying  to  break  each  others’ 
lives.  .  .  . 

Mary  tried  to  calm  me.  We  had  been  in  Queens- 
haven  that  summer  and  my  mother  had  seemed,  as  she 
always  did,  in  radiant  health,  preserving  even  then  a 
faint  touch  of  the  coloring  and  the  freshness  of  youth. 
But  in  my  mind  some  dark,  actually  audible  gong 
seemed  to  ring  out.  Then  the  body  responded.  A 
sweetish,  gnawing  sickness  in  the  pit  of  the  stomach; 
a  bitter  dryness  in  the  throat  and  mouth.  For  several 
years  that  condition  never  left  me.  It  returns  often, 
to  this  day,  at  the  most  trifling  anxiety. 

On  the  long  journey  South,  caged  in  a  sleeper,  de- 

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prived  by  a  brutal  tyranny  of  the  tonic  and  relief  of 
wine,  I  shook  in  an  uninterrupted  cold  fever.  I  had 
no  hope  .  .  .  Queenshaven  looked  like  a  toy  city  in  an 
eerie  dream,  my  father’s  white  face  contorted  into  a 
smile  of  welcome  looked  like  a  goblin’s.  ‘‘Mother  is 
up,  perfectly  strong.”  He  tried  to  put  a  reassuring 
note  into  this  statement.  But  the  trouble  was — well? 
Yes,  cancer.  Far  gone.  In  a  most  vital  spot.  I  nearly 
doubled  up  with  the  sweetish  gnawing  in  my  entrails. 
I  tried  to  speak,  but  my  mouth  seemed  to  be  filled  with 
lime.  My  father,  patient  and  brave  as  always,  re¬ 
minded  me:  “Mother  is  up,  you  understand.  We 
must.  ...”  A  fierce  light  flared  up  in  my  brain.  ‘  ‘  Of 
course  we  must!”  She  wasn’t  going  to  the  hospital 
till  the  next  day.  She  wanted  first  to  spend  twenty- 
four  hours  with  me.  .  .  . 

She  stood  at  the  head  of  the  stairs  as  always  when 
I  came  home  with  the  soft  lamplight  on  her  beautiful, 
white  hair.  But  she  was  erect  and  her  skin  was  smooth 
as  a  girl’s.  Only  a  touch  of  paleness.  ...  I  put  my 
arms  about  her  and  dared  not  weep.  No,  somewhere 
within  me  I,  too,  found  the  strength  to  play  my  part. 
We  smiled  and  chatted  and  even  ate.  But  all  the  while 
I  had  a  queer  sensation.  I  heard  my  voice  and  the 
words  I  spoke  as  though  they  came  from  another 
speaker  in  the  farthest  comer  of  the  room.  When¬ 
ever  she  left  us  alone,  my  father  and  I  fell  silent  and 
our  contorted  faces  relaxed  and  we  rested  as  men 
catch  their  breath  in  the  intervals  of  torture.  .  .  .  On 
the  evening  of  that  day — a  calm,  bland  day — we  drove 
her  to  the  infirmary.  She  was  rather  stunned  and 
rather  frightened.  She  had  hardly  ever  known  illness. 
But  the  room  assigned  seemed  pleasant  to  her,  the 

[1781 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


special  nurse  was  a  sturdy,  sensible  Scotch  girl  and 
the  Mother  Superior  who  knew  us  and  had  some  in¬ 
sight  into  our  situation  was  quite  perfect  in  her  seri¬ 
ous,  hopeful  sweetness.  .  .  . 

The  operation,  next  morning,  lasted  for  over  an 
hour.  My  father  and  I  walked  up  and  down  in  front 
of  the  building.  We  lit  one  cigarette  from  another 
and  paced  and  paced.  We  didn’t  say  anything.  Now 
and  then  we  caught  each  others  ’  eyes  and  looked  away 
quickly.  We  couldn’t  bear  what  we  saw.  At  last  the 
Mother  Superior  stood  in  the  doorway.  From  her 
smile  we  knew  that  the  operation  had  been  successful. 
I  couldn’t  smile  back  and  she  looked  at  me  question- 
ingly.  But  I  was  beyond  self-deception  and  easy  con¬ 
solation  and  all  the  softer  feelings  by  which  people  try 
to  bear  the  unbearable.  I  knew  that  my  mother,  being 
strong,  would  probably  stand  the  operation,  however 
radical,  well ;  I  knew  that  the  surgeons  were  excellent. 
I  also  knew,  however,  that  there  wasn’t  a  chance  of 
the  lymphatic  system  not  being  badly  involved  and 
that  before  many  months  my  mother  would  die — would 
die  by  slow,  intolerable  poisoning,  with  all  her  hopes 
frustrated — would  die  before  I  had  had  a  chance  to 
bring  any  brightness  to  her  saddened  heart.  My  old 
race  against  fate  and  death  was  lost. 

I  was  able  to  stay  for  ten  days.  All  day  I  sat  be¬ 
side  her.  She  was  feeling  quite  well.  We  had  long 
talks,  her  hand  in  mine.  She  had  never  taken  the  mor¬ 
bid  interest  in  disease  that  is  so  common,  and  was  full 
of  hope  for  the  future.  So  even  these  talks  that  made 
her  happy  were  a  long  torment  to  me.  The  fatal  truth 
kept  beating  in  my  head  like  a  pulse.  Then  I  had  to 
go.  .  .  . 


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The  next  six  months !  Words  are  used  up  like  dull, 
cracked,  edgeless  knives.  They  cannot  cleave  to  those 
depths  of  pain  in  which,  in  the  very  centre  of  his  being, 
without  any  reservation,  a  man  desires  his  death.  Dur¬ 
ing  the  first  four  months  there  was  the  added  sting, 
the  withering  irony,  of  good  reports  and  cheerful  let¬ 
ters  to  write.  It  seemed — things  being  as  they  were — 
almost  more  merciful  when  she  began  to  sicken — when 
she  came  to  us  to  Central  City,  glad  to  be  there,  still 
not  wfithout  hope,  though  very  ill  and  broken.  And  it 
seemed  more  merciful,  too,  that  when  she  could  no 
longer  raise  herself  up  and  her  anguish  became  so 
acute  as  to  require  powerful  narcotics — that  then  she 
sank  more  swiftly  into  exhaustion  than  our  physicians 
had  predicted  and,  on  the  noon  of  a  brilliant  October 
day,  died  in  Mary’s  arms.  In  the  coffin  she  looked  young 
again  and  her  face  wore  an  expression  of  serenity 
and  severe  sweetness  which  I  had  not  seen  on  it  for 
many  years.  .  .  . 

During  many  weeks,  as  a  matter  of  instinctive  self- 
preservation,  I  sought  refuge  in  certain  idealistic  as¬ 
sumptions  and  speculations.  I  re-read  The  Critique  of 
the  Practical  Reason  and  even  Browning.  But  it 
was  merely  the  kind  of  gesture  by  which  a  man  tries 
to  ward  off  blows  he  is  too  weak  to  endure.  The  tenta¬ 
tive  and  half-prayerful  aspiration  toward  some  extra- 
mundane  source  of  power  and  good  which  had  re¬ 
mained  with  me  from  my  Christian  youth  died  out  en¬ 
tirely.  I  saw  the  world  in  a  harder  and  a  drier  mood. 
i  I  lost  my  last  shred  of  respect  for  all  religious  and 
ethical  formulations— for  all  types  of  supernaturalism 
and  absoluteness  in  thinking — for  everything  except 
such  forms  of  beauty  or  freedom  or  justice  as  might 

[180] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 

mitigate  our  stark  wretchedness  on  earth.  It  seemed 
to  me  then,  as  it  seems  to  me  now,  unspeakably  mon¬ 
strous  that,  in  a  world  where  people  are  poisoned  by 
cancer,  they  should  persecute  each  other  by  social  dis¬ 
tinctions,  ill-apportioned  wealth,  ethical  bickering  or 
rob  each  other  of  a  moment’s  peace  in  the  brief,  pitiful 
sunlight  in  the  name  of  any  absolutist  formulary,  legal 
or  moral  or  religious.  That  sounds  crude.  But  I  am 
not  writing  a  philosophical  treatise.  And  I  am  sure 
that  a  description  of  the  source  in  concrete  experience 
from  which  most  philosophic  and  all  poetic  visions  of 
the  sum  of  reality  spring,  would  sound  just  as  crude. 
In  a  word,  I  abandoned  all  faith  in  any  form  of  per¬ 
sonal  and  transcendental  idealism  and  gradually 
adopted  the  hope  for  economic  security  and  personal 
freedom  embodied  in  the  revolutionary  movement  of 
our  period.  No,  I  am  not,  like  a  good  many  liberals, 
shirking  the  name  of  Socialism.  But  I  would  break 
with  Socialism  as  swiftly  as  with  any  other  system,  if 
it  were  not  to  confine  the  power  of  society  over  the  in¬ 
dividual  strictly  to  the  sphere  of  economics,  hygiene 
and  the  necessity — not  the  character! — of  education; 
if  it  were  not  to  leave  the  personal  and  moral  life  of 
the  individual  absolutely  free.  I  mean  absolutely.  I 
do  not  mean  that  hoary  iniquity,  that  vile  excuse  for 
conscription  and  sex-slavery  known  as  “liberty,  oh, 
yes — but  no  licence.”  I  mean  that  every  man  shall 
practice  his  own  liberty,  even  though  it  seems  licence 
to  another.  I  want  a  world — to  return  to  that  burning 
symbol  in  my  personal  life — in  which  the  beautiful, 
sensitive,  gifted  spirit  of  my  mother  would  not  have 
been  warped  and  crippled  by  mean  anxieties  and  social 
exclusions  and  absurd  ethical  inhibitions,  but  one  in 

[1811 


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which  she  could  have  lived  the  years  that  the  dark 
powers  behind  the  veil  permitted  her  in  freedom  and 
richness  and  the  expansion  of  all  her  tastes  and  sensi¬ 
bilities.  And  I  think  this  outlook  on  life  well-estab¬ 
lished.  It  is  not  founded  on  speculation  or  tradition, 
but  on  the  granite  basis  of  a  tragic  fact. 

n 

So  I  became,  naturally,  more  concerned  with  so¬ 
ciety  and  more  watchful  of  it.  Before  this  I  had  been 
almost  wholly  engrossed  in  art  and  thought  and  learn¬ 
ing.  I  now  turned  my  attention  upon  this  city  and 
state  in  which  I  lived  and  on  the  way  in  which  my  fel¬ 
low-citizens  were  managing  their  affairs  and  mine. 

A  mayor  was  to  be  elected.  The  city  had  then  over 
two  hundred  thousand  inhabitants.  Its  government 
entailed  some  very  difficult  engineering  problems. 
Also,  it  was  and  is  dispiriting  in  its  ugliness.  There 
was  its  educational  machine.  There  were  other  intri¬ 
cate  matters.  Now  for  this  difficult  office  of  mayor 
we  had  six  candidates:  a  business  man,  a  printer,  a 
bank  official,  the  chief  of  police,  two  lawyers.  Let  me 
omit  the  two  lawyers.  I  knew  little  about  them  except 
the  fact  of  their  obscurity  before  election  time  and  that 
neither  had  a  chance  of  being  elected.  Of  the  other 
four,  one  of  whom  was  elected,  I  can  make  certain  very 
definite  assertions :  they  knew  nothing  of  municipal 
engineering,  nothing  of  education,  nothing  of  the  ele¬ 
ments  of  even  the  conventional  doctrines  of  political 
science,  nothing  of  the  experiments  tried  in  the  city- 
government  of  other  countries.  In  a  word,  they  had 
no  equipment  for  the  office  to  which  they  aspired.  Nor 

[182] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


was  it  likely  that  these  elderly,  semi-illiterate  men 
would  equip  themselves  either  during  the  brawling 
campaign  months  or  during  their  two  years  in  office. 
The  stock  reply  of  the  conventional  American  is: 
Lincoln  had  no  education  either.  True.  But  man¬ 
kind  doesn’t  produce  a  certain  type  of  moral  genius 
by  the  thousand.  It  can  produce  well-trained  and  in¬ 
telligent  officials.  You  cannot  administer  a  common¬ 
wealth  by  waiting  for  miracles.  Those  four  candi¬ 
dates,  at  all  events,  hadn’t  any  claims  to  being  demo¬ 
cratic  saviors  of  society.  On  the  contrary.  They  were 
men  of  the  coarsest  fibre — men  with  spiritually  dead 
faces,  with  something  gross  and  callous,  impudent  and 
yet  furtive  about  their  personalities  and  bearing.  They 
exhibited  a  curious,  I  had  almost  said,  family  resem¬ 
blance  in  this  respect.  And  it  was  ghastly  to  see  how 
these  men,  in  the  poster  photographs  during  the  cam¬ 
paign,  had  tried  to  look  the  part  expected  of  them — 
benevolent  and  honest,  “ smart”  and  burly.  The  pic¬ 
tures  seemed  to  want  to  say  to  the  voter:  4 4 Don’t 
think  I  pretend  to  know  more  than  you.  I  worked  hard 
as  a  boy  and  supported  my  pore  ol’  mother.  I  never 
had  no  time  for  book-  leamin’.  But  I’ve  got  a  cer¬ 
tain  amount  of  plain  common  sense,  Mr.  Voter,  and 
business  experience  and  these  I  want  to  put  at  your 
disposal.  And  I’m  a  jolly  good  fellow.” 

In  their  speeches  and  proclamations  these  four 
candidates  made  the  same  assertions.  Each  was  going 
to  give  the  city  an  honest  administration — no  graft — 
(as  if  that  were  a  positive  virtue,  as  if  it  weren’t 
shameful  that  the  voter  should  have  to  choose  on  that 
plane) — each  was  going  to  give  us  a  clean  city — (by 
which  he  meant  making  life  a  bit  more  difficult  for  a 

[183] 


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few  hundred  prostitutes) — each  was  going  to  give  us 
an  efficient  and  economical  administration.  Very  well. 
Only  every  one  knew  that  none  of  the  men  had  the 
equipment  or  the  purity  of  will  to  do  either.  As  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  fact  the  candidates  wanted  office  either  because 
they  thought  it  would  help  them  in  a  business  way  or 
through  meanly  personal  ambition  or  because  they  had 
been  accustomed  to  make  their  bread  and  butter  out  of 
a  political  job.  Seeing  their  character,  it  was  not  diffi¬ 
cult  to  imagine  what  concessions  and  promises  each 
made  quite  inevitably  to  the  business  men  and  finan¬ 
ciers  who  backed  him  and  provided  the  machinery  and 
funds  for  his  campaign. 

All  this  sounds  commonplace  enough.  And  indeed 
it  is.  But  I  came  upon  it  with  a  certain'  freshness,  a 
certain  innocence,  an  ability  to  be  shocked  by  the 
brazen  and  meaningless  clatter  of  it.  The  world  has 
moved  since  then.  But  the  character  of  political  gov¬ 
ernment  in  the  affairs  of  cities  and  of  states  has  not 
changed.  Its  purpose  is  to  deceive  the  common  folk 
and  to  fortify  and  extend  the  power  of  the  privileged 
classes.  And  since  power  ultimately  means  economic 
power,  since  its  one  source  is  possession — possession 
of  land,  tools,  means  of  transportation — it  follows  that, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  the  whole  function  and 
intent  of  political  government  is  to  keep  possession  and 
hence  power  in  the  hands  of  those  that  now  hold  it. 
And  since  this  oligarchy  controls  the  press  and  thus 
controls  both  the  news  and  opinion  based  on  news,  it  is 
clear  that  its  self-perpetuation  will  not  be  broken — has 
not  been  broken  in  any  country — without  some  final 
catastrophe. 


[184] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


n 

Have  we,  I  asked  in  those  years,  no  directer  expres¬ 
sion  of  the  popular  will.  Yes.  In  matters  that  are 
non-political,  therefore  non-economic  and  so  moder¬ 
ately  indifferent  to  the  possessing  classes — in  educa¬ 
tion  (though  even  here,  as  I  have  shown,  it  is  to  the 
profit  of  the  oligarchs  to  confirm  popular  folly)  and 
in  the  government  of  the  personal  life  of  men.  Every 
two  years  in  those  days  the  people  of  the  state  voted  on 
a  prohibition  amendment  to  the  constitution;  every 
two  years  it  was  defeated  by  a  smaller  minority.  To¬ 
day  we  have  national  prohibition.  New  York  liberals 
wonder  how  it  could  have  happened.  They  should 
have  watched  the  paralysis  of  will  and  impulse  creep¬ 
ing  over  a  Middle  Western  state,  a  state  full  of  what 
has  recently  become  known  as  the  4 4 home-town.’ ’ 

Each  time  the  question  came  up  I  found  my  Anglo- 
American  friends  succumbing  a  little  more  and  a  little 
less  willing  to  protest  against  the  raucous  propaganda. 
It  became  in  the  end  almost  4 4 bad  form.”  In  the  first 
place,  twenty-one  states  were  already  dry — even  Mich¬ 
igan.  So  the  terrible  fatalism  of  democracy,  inherent 
in  its  worship  of  majority  opinion  and  its  fundamental 
rejection  of  qualitative  distinctions  was  making  itself 
felt  more  and  more.  If  a  disease  spreads,  expose  your¬ 
self  to  it.  Why  should  yon  want  something  better  than 
others?  I  found  my  acquaintances  almost  so  sodden 
in  their  folly.  Furthermore — it  was  a  question  of 
morals  and  they  had  an  unconquerable  hesitation 
toward  taking  a  negative  attitude  on  a  question  of 
morals.  Even  those  who  were  not  at  all  fanatical  and 
themselves  drank  were  willing  to  let  things  take  their 

[185] 


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evil  course:  “It  does  nobody  any  good;  it  does  some 
people  harm;  I  mustn’t  be  selfish.  ...”  They  looked  at 
me  with  estranged  eyes  when  I  said:  “I’d  be  willing 
to  take  an  oath  never  to  touch  fermented  liquor  again 
if  only  I  could  save  our  people  from  the  infamy  of  pro¬ 
hibition.  ’ ’ 

But  most  of  my  friends  were,  in  some  strange  way, 
hypnotized  by  the  fevered  fanatics  of  the  Anti-Saloon 
League  and  the  Evangelical  Churches.  No  one  seemed 
to  understand  the  character  of  these  poor  creatures. 
They  can  no  longer  burn  witches  or  whip  Quakers. 
They  have  somehow  lost  their  grip  on  the  devil  of  old. 
So  they  have  made  the  substance  known  as  ethyl  al¬ 
cohol  into  an  overshadowing  myth — the  evil  thing  in 
the  world  that  must  be  fought  and  trodden  under  foot 
and  exorcised  by  Christian  men.  Since  they  cannot 
quite  in  this  age  say  that  I  am  an  unbelieving  dog, 
they  say — with  sternly  pitying  and  averted  faces — that 
I  shall  die  a  drunkard.  It  is,  of  course,  because  in 
their  savage  and  yet  festering  souls  they  have  never 
caught  a  glimpse  of  the  meaning  of  humane  culture — 
choice,  self-direction,  a  beautiful  use  of  all  things. 
These  poor  slaves  of  drink  must  either  howl  against  it 
or  reel  in  barrooms.  One  knows  the  type :  thin-lipped, 
embittered  by  the  poisons  that  unnatural  repression 
breeds,  with  a  curious  flatness  about  the  temples,  with 
often,  among  the  older  men,  a  wiry,  belligerent  beard. 
You  have  seen  them  with  their  shallow-bosomed,  ill- 
favored  wives — stem  advocates  of  virtue — walking  on 
Sunday  self-consciously  to  church.  The  wine  they  have 
never  tasted,  the  white  beauty  they  have  never  seen, 
the  freedom  of  art  they  have  never  known — all  their 

[186] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


unconscious  hungers  have  turned  to  gall  and  worm¬ 
wood  in  their  crippled  souls. 

Yet  to  these  maimed  creatures — a  bodily  cripple 
is  a  more  wholesome  sight — my  friends  in  Central 
City  yielded  more  and  more.  They  yielded  to  them 
in  all  matters.  A  film  was  shown  down  town  that  Mary 
and  I  wanted  to  see.  It  was  useless.  Before  we  could 
go,  the  secretary  of  the  Lord’s  Day  Association  had 
caused  it  to  be  mutilated  in  the  interest  of  our  moral 
being.  ...  I  wanted  to  buy  another  copy  of  Dreiser’s 
The  Genius.  It  had  been  forbidden  by  the  Society  for 
the  Prevention  of  Vice.  I  am  not  able,  as  some  of  my 
liberal  New  York  friends  are,  to  take  a  humourous 
view  of  this  situation.  To  take  that  view  of  it  is  to  be 
in  danger  of  supineness.  Consider  the  matter  clearly : 
We  are  helpless  against  any  irresponsible  person  who 
shouts:  Morality,  Purity,  the  Home.  Yet  precisely 
these  difficult  and  rigid  concepts  must  be  broken  before 
a  ray  of  civilization  can  light  our  gloom.  For  en¬ 
tangled  in  them,  tightly  woven  into  them,  is  an  amount 
of  concrete  human  tyranny,  concrete  human  suffering 
— days  of  despair  and  nights  of  agony — that  is  prob¬ 
ably  unexampled  in  history.  The  emotional  acceptance 
of  these  concepts  has  diminished  even  where  a  help¬ 
lessness  of  the  mind  curbs  the  formation  of  a  conscious 
protest.  The  result  is  dumb  misery  and  perversion 
and  the  sickening  and  putrefaction  of  the  impulses  of 
will  and  sex.  When  psychical  explosions  come,  they 
necessarily  take  the  form  of  war,  hate,  persecution, 
lynching.  Degraded  by  the  oppression  of  Morality 
and  Purity  and  the  Home — in  their  current  mean¬ 
ings — men  summon  the  evil  passions  bred  by  their 
degradation  to  defend  its  instruments.  .  .  . 

[187] 


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IV 

In  onr  early  years  in  Central  City  Mary  and  I  used 
to  go  out  into  society  a  good  deal.  Later  we  acquired 
a  reputation  for  refusing  invitations.  I  could  endure 
no  more.  For  what  was  the  use  of  going  to  places  if 
other  people  only  sent  their  clothes  and  manners  and 
left  their  real  selves  at  home.  It  was,  at  best,  a  pan¬ 
tomime,  a  ceremony,  a  decorative  device.  I  cannot  say 
that  most  of  our  acquaintances  in  Central  City  were 
successful  decorations.  Stereotyped  phrases  fluttered 
in  the  air;  ice-cream  was  served.  The  phrases  sick¬ 
ened  me ;  so  did  the  ice-cream. 

What  wore  on  me  most  was  the  appalling  mental 
vacuity.  People  said  they  were  having  a  pleasant 
time.  Some  lied.  Others  had  sunk  so  low  that  their 
remark  was  true.  Since  I,  as  a  teacher  and  writer, 
was  supposed  to  have  an  official  connection  with  the 
arts,  the  women  talked  art  at  me — poetry  and  the 
drama.  Cold  chills  used  to  run  down  my  spine.  “Art, 
my  good  ladies,  is  not  what  you  suppose:  it’s  not  a 
game — like  bridge;  it’s  not  a  ceremony — like  a  recep¬ 
tion.  It  is  the  record  and  clarification  of  deepest 
human  experience.  It  raises  into  permanence  and 
beauty  for  our  contemplation  the  experience  of  man 
upon  his  way.  Think  of  the  day  you  saw  your  mother 
die,  of  the  hours  you  lay  in  bitter  labor  with  your  first¬ 
born,  of  the  moment  when  you  came,  a  virgin,  to  a 
man’s  embrace.  These  are  sources  of  art.  Or  have 
you  ever  been  hungry  or  an  outcast  or  fought  single- 
handed  in  a  good  cause?”  If  I  had  ever  said  that! 
“Don’t  you  think,  doctor,  that  X.  is  a  wonder  fid 
writer?”  “Of  course,  you  ought  to  know,  but  1  think. . . 

[188] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


think.  .  .  .”  So  they  twittered  and  chirped — elderly 
women,  too,  mothers  who  ought  to  have  come  into  some 
earnestness  with  the  years.  They  had.  Only  the  life 
of  art  and  of  the  intellect  is  not  a  serious  matter  to 
them  and  their  kind.  Money  is  a  serious  matter.  So¬ 
cial  position  is  another.  Health  is  a  third.  Then  why, 
in  God’s  name,  didn’t  they  talk  money  and  social  posi¬ 
tion  and  disease?  Why  were  they  not  a  little  truthful? 
I  don’t  care  about  money  and  social  position  and  I 
hate  to  talk  about  disease  except  when  I  must  and  then 
to  a  doctor.  Yet  everything  human  is  interesting,  so 
it  be  forthright  and  comes  from  a  deep  source.  .  .  . 
But  that’s  bad  form.  “Oh,  I  thought  your  lecture  last 
week  so  stimulating.”  She  probably  lied  and  I  felt 
like  asking  her  what  my  lecture  was  about.  Instead  I 
had  to  grin  over  my  abominable  ice-cream  and  say  with 
the  proper  intonation:  “So  nice  of  you  to  have  come 
to  it.”  No,  I  abandoned  that  sort  of  thing  and  went, 
instead,  to  a  public-house  with  a  friend.  It  was  so 
much  more  decent.  Of  course,  I  was  popularly 
credited  with  a  tinge  of  vulgarity.  But  the  people 
forgave  me.  Even  those  who  didn’t  never  let  Mary 
feel  it.  Until  the  war  came  they  were  kindly  enough. 
. . .  The  men,  at  these  affairs,  were  largely  background. 
They  followed  the  lead  of  the  women.  There  was  a 
touch  of  mild,  middle-aged  archness.  Flirting  would 
be  too  gross  a  word.  There  was  no  liberty  of  mind  or 
emotion  or  personality  or  speech. 

The  men  alone  present  a  different  aspect.  I  was, 
for  instance,  invited  to  a  private  and  exclusive  little 
club  of  business-men  and  bankers  and  lawyers  and 
physicians.  The  club  met  at  a  rich  man’s  house.  The 
place  was  furnished  with  luxury  and  in  tolerably  good 

[  189  ] 


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taste.  There  was  beer  and  tobacco  and  an  atmosphere 
of  virile  ease.  It  looked  hopeful.  Nearly  all  the  men 
had  a  local  reputation  for  culture  and  were  graduates 
of  Eastern  colleges.  Yet,  as  the  evening  wore  on,  I 
grew  more  and  more  silent  and  when  it  was  over  I 
was  glad  to  get  out  into  the  cool,  dark  street  alone. 
For  these  men  talked  exclusively  of  things — the  price 
of  real  estate,  of  stocks  and  bonds  and  sugar.  They 
told  stories  of  shady  business  deals  and  of  political 
corruption.  Not,  be  it  observed,  in  a  spirit  of  criticism, 
but  with  acquiescent  good  humor.  The  monstrous 
implication  of  all  their  talk — I  include  both  the  dis¬ 
tinguished  occulist  and  the  learned  judge — was  this: 
here  we  have  the  best  of  all  polities  in  the  best  of  all 
possible  worlds;  for  in  this  polity  and  in  this  world 
we  make  our  money  and  have  these  houses  and  auto¬ 
mobiles  and  fifty-cent  cigars.  Anyone,  therefore,  who 
wants  to  change  this  order  is  a  knave  or  a  fool  and 
we  would  go  to  any  length  to  crush  him.  Well-fed, 
well-groomed,  they  sat  in  their  impenetrable  stolidity, 
taking  liberties  with  everything  except  their  minds. 
The  gentleness  which  they  had  at  receptions  was  quite 
gone.  There  was  something  agate-like  about  them.  I 
understood  at  last  how  it  is  possible  for  men  to  hire 
thugs  and  incite  striking  workers  to  violence  and  then 
shoot  them  down.  In  mellower  intervals  they  talked 
golf  and  base-ball.  .  .  .  They  treated  me  with  finished 
courtesy.  But  their  courtesy  didn’t  hide  their  essential 
attitude:  I  was  to  them  (by  virtue  of  the  interests  I 
stood  for)  a  little  higher  than  a  fiddler,  many  degrees 
lower,  except  socially,  than  “Babe”  Ruth.  They  didn’t 
mind  an  occasional  condescension  to  art  and  learn¬ 
ings.  But  these  things  are  really,  they  seemed  to  say, 

[190] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


luxuries  for  women.  Nor  did  their  own  assertion  of 
personal  freedom — the  excellent  beer  they  drank — en¬ 
courage  one.  For  they  drank  only  at  private  houses 
and  private  clubs.  They  drank  with  an  evil  secretive¬ 
ness  and  a  poisonous  aloofness.  Quite  conceivably 
they  voted  “dry.”  Their  clubs  are  still  supplied — 
you  may  be  sure.  The  decent  and  the  democratic  places 
to  drink  are  home — with  open  windows — and  the  pub¬ 
lic-house.  But  a  genuine  as  opposed  to  a  pseudo-demo¬ 
cratic  bearing  might  have  injured  their  financial 
standing,  their  professional  dignity.  In  public  they 
all  talk  liberty.  In  reality  they  were  stealthier  than 
feudal  lords.  Later,  no  doubt,  they  became  the  sup¬ 
porters  of  Navy  Clubs  and  Defense  Leagues  and  of 
the  modern  Inquisition  under  Mitchel  Palmer.  .  .  . 

v 

Is  there  no  rebellion  against  the  dark  unveracity 
that  degrades  and  muffles  all  the  instincts  of  man? 
Faint  flutterings — pathetic  in  the  sense  of  their  own 
feebleness  and  shame.  Has  any  other  people  ever 
expressed  its  Dionysiac  mood  so  spiritlessly  as  in  jazz, 
the  new  dances,  the  common  cabaret?  And  yet  .  .  . 
listen  well  to  this  raucous,  syncopated  music — not 
music  so  much  as  sheer,  rude  rhythm — like  the  stamp¬ 
ing  feet  and  clapping  hands  of  rude,  old  orgiastic  folk- 
dances.  Now  and  then,  in  the  tunes,  you  come  upon  a 
vain  and  melancholy  cry — a  cry  of  torment,  a  cry  of 
liberation.  Read  the  words  of  the  popular  songs — 
sung  in  a  million  parlors  every  evening  by  shop-girls, 
typists,  laundresses,  even  college-girls  to  their 

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“beaux.”  They  are  illiterate  and  vulgar  and  inde¬ 
scribably  mean.  But  what  imperious  instinct  cursed 
and  beaten  into  hiding  will  not  show  the  ugly  marks 
of  the  slave?  The  choruses  of  these  songs  are  ugly 
because  they  dare  not  be  beautiful,  stealthy  because 
they  dare  not  be  frank.  But  in  dance  and  song  and 
ragtime  there  is  a  craving  for  rhythm — the  rhythm  of 
the  world  that  is  sex  and  poetry  and  freedom.  It  is  an 
ugly,  hoarse,  tortured  rhythm — like  the  dancing  of  a 
crippled  child.  .  .  .  The  rhythm  beats  on  and  on.  .  .  . 

My  friend  the  lawyer  told  me  this  story  from  the 
records  of  the  Central  City  courts.  A  fellow  killed  a 
man  and  was  sent  to  prison.  His  young  wife  sup¬ 
ported  herself  and  her  child  and  her  mother  and  faith¬ 
fully  waited  for  her  husband.  He  came  out  of  prison 
and  beat  her  and  ran  away  and  was  heard  of  no  more. 
So  the  young  woman  and  her  mother  took  a  lodger.  He 
fell  in  love  with  the  woman  and  they  lived  together.  He 
supported  her  and  her  mother  and  her  child.  But  when 
his  own  child  was  born  the  court  arrested  the  couple, 
sentenced  them  to  the  workhouse  for  adultery  and 
placed  the  children  in  public  institutions.  The  records 
do  not  tell  us  what  became  of  the  old  mother,  nor  in 
what  state  of  mind  the  man  and  woman  came  from 
the  workhouse.  Do  you  wonder  that  to  the  people  love 
has  come  to  seem  a  shameful  thing?  .  .  .  Men  sit  at 
cheap  burlesque  shows  with  a  leer.  Why  not?  Judges 
and  clergymen  and  businessmen  tell  them  that  their 
appetites — the  source  of  all  they  have  in  life  of  poetry 
and  romance  and  the  freedom  of  choice  and  adventure 
— are  bestial ;  that  they  are  not — the  last  ingenuity  of 
foulness — to  be  humanized,  but  to  be  whipped  out  of 
sight  like  mangy  curs.  Then  they  expect  them  to  be 

[  192  ] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


clean  and  handsome.  .  .  .  The  man  and  the  woman  of 
my  story  came  out,  I  suppose,  with  a  purer  love,  a 
cleaner  sex-life,  a  higher  self-respect.  ...  We  shall 
not  have  lovelier  private  morals  until  we  have 
destroyed  public  morality — the  fang  and  claw  of 
Puritan  capitalism.  .  . 

There  are  nobler  protests  and  more  conscious  ones 
than  dances  and  cabarets.  There  is  the  rebellion  of 
the  intellect  and  of  a  few  free  personalities.  Little 
groups  of  men  and  women  detach  themselves  from  the 
monotonous  mass  here  and  there.  People  jeer  at  Green¬ 
wich  Village — the  shabby  Latin  Quarter  of  New  York. 
Even  liberals  are  contemptuous.  But  do  you  expect 
anything  unstained  and  clear  to-day!  Even  this  is 
something.  The  other  day,  after  a  long  interval,  I 
wrote  some  verses.  And  they  sum  up  something  of 
this  whole  matter.  I  called  the  verses  The  Greenwich 
Villagers  and  represented  these  people  as  speaking 
of  themselves: 

We’re  shabby  and  not  always  clean.  We  know.  .  .  . 

You  come  from  Harlem  and  from  Washington  Heights 
And  look  at  us  as  though  we  were  a  show, 

And  crowd  through  foolish  little  inns  for  sights, 

And,  being  liberals,  are  sorry  for 
Our  fluttering  aims  and  large  futility.  .  .  . 

And  when  the  lamps  go  out  we  seem  to  be 
Hovering  shadows  in  a  dim  corridor 
That  leads  to  places  where  a  man  forgets 
Amid  the  blue  fume  of  the  cigarettes 
Man’s  proper  business  for  which  earth  was  made: 
Marriage  and  war  and  trade. 

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But  just  because  we  do  forget,  because 

In  our  small,  callow,  ineffectual  way 

We  drift  beyond  success  and  all  its  laws 

And  warm  our  hearts  with  brief  loves  as  the  day 

Dips  red  in  the  North  River — therefore  we 

Are  as  a  flicker  of  hope  above  the  gray 

Walls  of  your  goodness  and  brutality. 

We  are  the  children  of  the  land  who  fled 
In  Autumn  when  the  winds  of  longing  blew 
Even  from  Pittsburgh  and  from  Kalamazoo 
From  jobs  in  which  our  brothers  served  and  rose, 

From  colleges  with  Doric  porticoes 

Where  living  things  are  fettered  to  things  dead — 

And  we  are  nothing  but  the  unresigned 
Who  in  great  darkness  feebly  speak  the  name 
Of  that  rebellion  which  will  save  mankind 
And  from  our  poor,  lost  ashes  leap  to  flame. 

And  so  you  may  despise  us  more  or  less, 

And  hug  your  righteousness  and  your  success, 

And  never  dream  that  we  poor  lads  in  blue, 

We  girls  with  draggled  skirts  and  close-bobbed  hair 
May  be  the  saving  of  the  souls  of  you, 

Even  as  we  tramp  on  Greenwich  Avenue 
Or  loiter  in  the  dusk  on  Washington  Square. 

But  these  things  were  far  from  Central  City.  Faint 
rumors  came.  What,  in  those  years,  I  definitely  knew 
and  saw  was  the  Federal  Post  Office  stamping  out  as 
either  “seditious”  or  “obscene”  anything  it  pleased. 
From  1915  on  the  silence  deepened — an  ugly  ominous 
silence.  Such,  I  dare  say,  was  the  silence  in  the  In¬ 
quisition  chambers.  Also,  men  began  to  break  off 
speech  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence  and  turn  a  little  red 
or  pale.  And  they  began  to  watch  each  other  and  fur¬ 
tively  to  listen  to  each  other  for  seditious  remarks  and 

[194] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


plan  and  scheme  how  they  could  make  business  or  pro¬ 
fessional  profit  out  of  their  neighbor’s  indiscretion. 
And  anonymous  letters  and  telephone  calls  kept  busy 
the  offices  of  the  District  Attorney,  who,  although  we 
were  to  be  ‘ 4 kept  out  of  the  war,”  was  very  accessible 
to  information  that  might  come  in  handy  later.  .  .  . 

VI 

Yet  then  and  even  now  the  man  on  the  streets 
thinks  that  we  have  liberty.  He  has  no  true  concep¬ 
tion  of  its  nature,  and  his  spirit  is  corrupted  by  the 
brutal  romanticism  of  success.  For  he  is  right  in 
thinking  that,  within  ever  narrowing  limits,  he  has  one 
kind  of  liberty — the  liberty  of  economic  competition. 
He  may,  if  he  is  clever  and  unscrupulous  enough,  steal 
the  resources  that  belong  to  all  men  and  so  enslave  a 
number  of  his  fellows  and  become  a  plutocrat  him¬ 
self.  He  reads  about  Morgan  and  Rockefeller  and 
shakes  his  head  with  a  leer:  “ Smart  men.”  And  per¬ 
haps  he  has  a  day-dream  of  himself — now  working  at 
thirty-five  a  week  and  rent  going  up  and  the  children 
without  shoes — and  well,  who  knows  ?  He  may  himself 
“put  through  a  little  deal”  some  day  and  live  “on 
easy  street!”  He  wouldn’t  vote  the  Socialist  ticket 
for  hell!  Why,  look  at  So  and  So!  Started  at  eight 
a  week.  Now  he’s  president  of  the  Great  Gorge  Road. 
Worth  five  millions  if  he’s  worth  a  cent.  The  man 
pushes  back  his  greasy  derby  and  spits  with  a  specu¬ 
lative  air.  “Smart  people  in  this  here  world,  I  tell 
you.”  His  wife  reads  her  Sunday  paper  and  glows 
over  accounts  of  the  social  doings  of  the  local  pluto¬ 
crats.  She  drops  her  paper  and  dreams  the  same  day- 

[195] 


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dream  from  another  angle.  And  the  cheap  magazines 
that  float  their  way  and  the  picture-shows  they  see  all 
glorify  wealth  and  “ getting  on”  and  yet  carefully  re¬ 
frain  from  arousing  any  social  consciousness.  For 
generally  the  old  millionaire  repents  and  sinks  into  a 
pool  of  domestic  emotions  and  gives  his  daughter  in 
marriage  to  the  poor  young  man.  And  our  citizen’s 
wife  nudges  her  husband  and  points  to  the  young  man 
on  the  screen  who  is  just  about  to  marry  the  million¬ 
aire’s  daughter  and  says:  “Ain’t  he  the  perfect  image 
of  our  Johnny?” 

Our  man  has  the  liberty  of  economic  competition. 
Of  the  slimness  of  his  chance  to  avail  himself  of  that 
liberty  he  does  not  think.  He  can  dream  his  favorite 
dream.  Also  he  has  a  vote.  He  can  choose  between 
two  candidates  both  offered  him  by  essentially  the 
same  masters.  Also  he  can  worship  at  either  the  Bap¬ 
tist  Church  or  the  Methodist  or  the  Gampbellite.  But 
once  let  him  think  and  arise  from  the  dull  mass  and 
cease  worshipping  the  idols  of  the  tribe  and  the  mar¬ 
ket-place  !  If  he  speaks  he  will  be  gagged ;  if  he  acts 
he  will  be  jailed.  Yet  it  is  only  for  that  arisen  and 
awakened  man  that  liberty  has  its  true  meaning.  When 
the  personal  consciousness  emerges  from  the  merely 
tribal  consciousness — there  is  the  birth  of  liberty. 
Hence  in  a  deeper  sense  the  common  phrase  is  true: 
liberty  means  progress — the  liberty  of  individuals  to 
rebel  against  the  mass-life,  to  repudiate  mass-thinking, 
to  shatter  the  folk-ways,  to  be  the  instruments  of 
change.  A  society  in  which  majority  opinion  and  pub¬ 
lic  law  have  not  risen  to  the  tolerance  of  such  free  per¬ 
sonalities  is  a  society  without  liberty  and  without  hope 

[196] 


THE  COLOR  OF  LIFE 


from  within.  It  may  build  machinery  and  heap  up 
wealth.  It  is  as  stagnant  as  a  rotting  pool. 

One  hears  people  talk  fatuously  about “evolution” 
not  revolution.  They  are  usually  of  the  economic 
master  class.  What  they  mean  is  the  preservation  of 
the  status  quo.  They  hope  that  they  will  always  be 
able  to  gather  enough  votes  and  control  enough  can¬ 
didates  and  own  enough  land  and  tools  and  ships  and 
trains  to  perpetuate  the  present  order  exactly  as  it  is. 
Thus  they  defeat  the  hope  of  orderly  change  and  create 
the  revolutionary  spirit.  For  they  stigmatize  each 
step  in  the  developmental  process  as  revolutionary. 
And  since  all  ultimate  change  is  reached  by  successive 
changes,  since,  in  a  word,  the  evolutionary  process 
consists  of  a  series  of  revolutions,  they  rob  them¬ 
selves,  by  their  own  unveracity  and  muddleheadedness, 
of  the  easements  in  the  process  of  change  which  might 
well  be  theirs.  Hence,  though  they  may  delay  their 
fall,  they  refuse  foolishly  to  mitigate  its  horrors.  It 
is*  an  old  story.  Men  do  not  learn  by  experience,  as  I 
have  said.  Nor  is  it  easy  for  them  to  believe  that  to 
be  true  which  contradicts  their  interests  and  their 
hopes.  We  all  share  that  weakness — capitalist  and 
proletarian,  business-man  and  intellectual.  But  there 
are  minds  which,  having  seen  their  hopes  go  down  to 
incredible  disaster  once,  walk  thereafter  more  warily 
and  humbly  in  the  world  and  see  the  drift  of  things 
which  will  not  change  for  their  liking  and  read  coldly, 
without  regard  to  their  hearts  and  desires,  the  signs 
that  flame  in  the  cosmic  skies. 


[197] 


CHAPTEE  IX 


Myth  and  Blood 

i 

In  August  the  grass  on  the  campus  looked  singed, 
the  trees  and  bushes  stale.  In  the  halls  the  graduate 
students,  registered  for  summer  school,  raised  a  clatter 
that  was  somehow  drained  of  energy.  They  went 
through  all  the  motions  of  intense  life,  but  the  inner 
principle  was  lacking.  White  skirts,  filmy  bodices, 
filmier  stockings.  Firm  bodies  that  throbbed.  But  the 
outer  mind,  carefully  trained  in  the  mimicry  of  self- 
preservation,  pursued  points  of  pedagogical  technique 
with  a  bitter  eagerness.  A  few  were  old  and  quiet. 
There  was  also  one  small,  consumptive-looking  China¬ 
man  with  a  cold,  remorseless  appetite  for  knowledge. 
He  seemed  to  gnaw  at  my  brain.  The  dusty  class-rooms 
pulsed  with  the  hot  air  and  the  bodies  of  the  young 
women.  “When  one  is  young’ ’ — I  was  'discussing 
Schnitzler  in  my  seminar  that  summer  of  1914 — “life 
is  full  of  windows  and  beyond  every  window  the  world 
begins.”  That  saying  seemed  a  ferocious  irony  in 
Central  City.  We  moved  in  a  cruel  hush  behind  black 
bars.  Our  windows  were  all  prison  windows. 

There  were  no  signs  in  the  heavens.  There  never 
are.  Only  I  remember  one  dry,  blazing  noon  looking 

[198] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


intently  at  the  stripped  and  wilted  lilac  bushes  and 
saying  to  myself:  “ Little  Servia.”  It  must  have  been 
July.  In  August  it  would  have  been :  ‘  ‘  Little  Belgium. 9  9 
Those  phrases  are  cheap  and  ugly  and  tattered  to-day. 
They  are  like  the  styles  of  a  decade  ago.  No  one  is 
saying:  “ Little  Hayti.”  They  are  out  of  fashion  but 
lacking  in  the  dignity  of  age;  they  are  ugly  without 
quaintness,  like  shoulder-of-mutton  sleeves.  Some  day 
they  will  flame  once  more  for  that  small  community 
of  spirits  which  remembers  and  records  the  vicissitudes 
of  mankind.  Then  it  will  be  written  down  how  huge 
populations  devoid  of  gallantry  or  mercy,  aching  them¬ 
selves  through  their  emissaries  to  dabble  in  the  blood 
of  any  at  their  feet — in  Amritsar  or  Balbriggan,  Hayti 
or  North  Africa,  Jewish  villages  in  Poland  or  black 
belt  towns  in  Georgia — took  up  the  cry  of  “Hun”  and 
poisoned  the  minds  of  young  people  and  little  children 
on  three  continents  not  against  the  fierce  competitions 
that  end  in  hate  and  blood,  but  against  the  soul  of  the 
German  people.  It  will  be  written  down  in  the  history 
books.  But  to  the  man  and  woman  on  the  street  his¬ 
toric  truth  is  pragmatic.  Truth  is  what  prevails. 
That  is  one  reason  why  I  think  this  Christian-cap¬ 
italistic  civilization  will  be  overturned.  At  its  core 
festers  a  cancerous  lie.  It  feeds  on  spiritual  tissue. 
The  superstructure  will  decay.  .  .  . 

I  shall  not  fight  the  war  over.  A  mind  that  does 
not  see  it  to-day  as  universal  guilt  or  else  universal 
blundering  and  fatality  and  does  not  mourn  over  every 
portion  of  mankind  with  an  intensity  measured  purely 
by  that  portion’s  acuteness  of  suffering,  is  beyond  the 
reach  of  reason  and  humanity.  I  find  a  good  many 

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people  admitting  that  now,  but  often  with  a  shadow 
of  mental  reservation.  Aren’t  we,  their  eyes  seem  to 
plead,  a  little,  oh,  just  a  little  better  than  the  Germans 
— just  we  and  the  British?  That  plea,  that  look,  is 
fatal.  Only  by  giving  up  self-righteousness  to  the  last 
shred,  only  by  an  utter  and  universal  brotherhood  in 
self-abasement  can  anything  be  saved  from  the  wreck¬ 
age.  For  those  with  that  look  in  their  eyes  and  also  to 
steady  and  keep  true  the  drift  of  this  story  which  is 
not  only  a  story  but  a  symbol  I  recall  and  record : 

The  German  militarists  commanded  the  fighting  to 
be  done  with  merciless  severity. 

British  troops  before  going  into  action  were  habit¬ 
ually  given  the  following  instructions:  “The  second 
bayonet  man  kills  the  wounded.  You  cannot  afford  to* 
be  encumbered  by  wounded  enemies  lying  about  your 
feet.  Don’t  be  squeamish.  The  army  provides  you 
with  a  good  pair  of  boots ;  you  know  how  to  use  them.” 
(Stephen  Graham:  A  Private  of  the  Guards.) 

From  1917  on  the  German  High  Command  used 
wildly  desperate  and  brutal  measures  to  win  the  war. 

From  the  autumn  of  1917  on,  the  hunger  blockade, 
which  the  government  of  the  United  States  called 
“illegal  and  indefensible”  in  1914,  produced  rachitis, 
a  change  and  softening  of  the  bony  structure  among 
the  civilian  population  of  Germany.  The  chief  suffer¬ 
ers  were  children  under  five,  adolescents  between  four¬ 
teen  and  eighteen  and  women  over  forty.  The  little 
children  became  crippled  and  could  not  walk ;  the  girls 
and  boys  crumpled  up  in  the  streets ;  the  women  died. 

The  Germans  had  lost  the  ancient  tradition  of  a 
chivalrous  respect  for  one’s  foes. 

[200] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


It  was  during  their  final  retreat  in  1919.  “  ‘I  must 
admit  that  the,  boche  is  a  tenacious  brute.’  said  a 
young  French  lieutenant  just  back  from  the  firing  line. 
4  This  Grand  Division  has  been  smashed  to  pieces,  yet 
the  remnant  fights  just  as  hard.  Cornered  rats,  I  sup¬ 
pose.  Anyway,  it  shows  that  their  discipline  is  still 
strong,  that  men  will  sell  their  lives  thus  without 
hope!’  ”  (The  New  York  Times,  July  31,  1919.) 

The  armies  of  the  allies  went  forth  to  defeat  a  men¬ 
acing  militarism.  They  believed  what  they  were  told. 

The  Germans  “were  men  fighting  blindly  to  guard 
an  ideal,  the  Heimat,  some  patch  of  mother  earth.  .  .  . 
This  everything  that  meant  home  to  them  they  were 
told  was  in  danger,  and  this  they  went  out  to  save.” 
(Evelyn,  Princess  Blucher:  An  English  Wife  in  Ber¬ 
lin.) 

Lissauer  wrote  a  Song1  of  Hate,  Regnier  wrote 
Serment,  our  population  went  to  a  propaganda  film: 
The  Beast  of  Berlin. 

Thackeray  recalls  the  wars  against  Napoleon  in  his 
lecture  on  George  III.  “We  prided  ourselves  on  our 
prejudices;  we  blustered  and  bragged  with  absurd 
vainglory;  we  dealt  to  our  enemy  a  monstrous  injus¬ 
tice  of  contempt  and  scorn;  we  fought  them  with  all 
weapons,  mean  as  well  as  heroic.  There  was  no  lie 
we  would  not  believe,  no  charge  of  crime  which  our 
furious  prejudice  would  not  credit.  I  thought  at  one 
time  of  making  a  collection  of  the  lies  which  the  French 
had  written  against  us  and  we  had  published  against 
them  during  the  war :  it  would  be  a  strange  memorial 
of  popular  falsehood.” 

A  universal  brotherhood  of  self-abasement! 

[201] 


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n 

In  Central  City  invisible  pulses  began  to  beat  all 
about  me  in  the  air.  I  wrote :  All  the  few  hard-won 
virtues  of  the  free  personality  are  going  down  to  dis¬ 
aster.  The  individual  was  merciful;  the  tribe  is  cal¬ 
lous.  The  individual  was  reasonable;  the  tribe  is  in 
the  grip  of  dark,  irrational  instincts.  Thus  public 
passions,  however  generous  their  apparent  origin, 
degenerate  into  wild  unreason  and  bestiality.  A  pub¬ 
lic  passion  of  religion  sees  miracles ;  a  public  passion 
of  hatred  sees  atrocities.  Both  are  well  attested  in  all 
countries  and  in  all  ages  of  a  religious  or  a  war-like 
mood.  Immemorial  savage  impulses  which  the  indi¬ 
vidual  dare  not  express  are  vented  under  the  supposed 
righteousness  of  a  tribal  sanction  and  decent  men 
become  persecutors,  lynchers  and  murderers.  Such, 
from  any  civilized  point  of  view,  is  the  basic  tragedy 
of  war.  The  merging  of  the  individual  into  the  tribe 
wipes  out  all  the  difficult  gains  of  the  cultural  process. 
It  hurls  us  back  into  the  red,  primordial  mists  of  hate 
and  cruelty  and  self-righteousness.  The  imaginative 
vision  comes  to  see  and  hear  in  the  tense  atmosphere 
of  still  peaceful  cities  symbolical  scenes  of  a  forgotten 
age — the  flashing  cymbals,  the  foaming  devotees,  the 
shrill  scream  of  the  human  sacrifice  in  the  storm- 
shaken  grove.  .  .  . 

The  great  myth  crystalized  with  a  suddenness  that 
took  one’s  breath  away.  A  quick,  thunderous  passion 
for  a  living  sacrifice  flared  up.  I  am  persuaded  that 
any  other  object  would  have  served  equally  well. 
Nearly  all  my  colleagues  in  Central  City  owed  the 
sounder  part  of  their  intellectual  equipment  to  Ger- 

[202] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


man  sources;  many  had  endearing  memories  of  the 
German  land  and  its  people.  These  potent  subjective 
realities  were  submerged  at  once.  The  flood,  then,  was 
one  that  had  always  been  pounding  in  the  darkness 
against  the  dykes  of  the  mind.  Historic  accident  or 
fatality  made  a  breach.  The  waters  swirled. 

They  all  led — the  great,  decent,  American  middle- 
classes,  business  and  professional — rigid  and  unnatural 
lives.  They  led  and  still  lead  unreal  lives.  In  France, 
in  Germany,  in  Italy,  the  same  official  codes  and  forms 
prevail.  But  there  the  forms  are  large-meshed  nets; 
here  they  are  cages  of  concrete  and  steel.  The  re¬ 
spectable  American  unless  he  is  quite  rich  cannot  take 
a  moral  holiday.  Even  when  he  takes  it,  his  nature  is 
so  inhibited  and  corrupted  by  an  unreal  morality  that 
his  holiday  becomes  a  debauch.  He  usually  marries 
rather  early  and  marries  a  woman  nearly  or  quite  his 
own  age.  Three  or  four  children  are  born.  When 
the  man  is  forty,  his  wife  has  no  freshness  left.  She 
is  a  little  wrinkled  and  without  emotional  resilience. 
It  is  tragic  for  the  women,  more  tragic  than  for  the 
men.  But  they  refuse  compassion  or  cure  by  refusing  to 
admit  the  reality  of  the  tragic  facts.  They  insist  on 
What  they  call  equal  marriages  and  as  they  fade  de¬ 
mand  more  stonily  the  rigidness  of  the  home  as  due  to 
their  cooperation,  their  social  worth,  the  sacred  service 
of  their  motherhood.  It  is  very  astute  of  them.  They 
deny  out  of  existence  the  wildness  of  nature.  The 
churches  aid  them.  The  men,  who  are  not  thinkers,  are 
deceived  into  hideous  repressions  or  ugly  debauches 
and  either  become  insensitive  or  battle  with  a  foolish 
sense  of  sin. 

It  will  be  thought  degraded  to  attribute  the  out- 

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burst  of  so-called  patriotic  passion  that  swept  this 
country  in  any  degree  to  the  sex-repressions  practised 
by  our  middle-classes.  But  it  was  not  due  to  terror 
and  revengefulness  as  in  France,  nor  to  terror  and 
ambition  as  in  Germany.  Nor  were  there  historic 
hatreds  or  old  feuds  or  national  memories  involved. 
Many  elements  unquestionably  contributed  to  it.  But 
its  peculiarly  unmotivated  ferocity,  its  hectic  heat  had 
in  it  something  unmistakably  religious,  orgiastic  and 
hence  obscurely  sexual.  Upon  Germany,  the  vicarious 
sacrifice,  was  heaped  all  secret  horror  and  shame  and 
corruption,  to  her  were  transferred  all  hidden  sins  and 
rebellions  and  perversities.  The  nation  became  a 
lynching  party.  Its  mood  expressed  itself  spontane¬ 
ously  through  sex-symbolism.  The  rape  of  Belgium! 
In  propaganda  films  and  plays,  the  German  villain 
was  always  represented  as  seeking  the  defloration  of 
American  virgins.  Faith,  blood,  sadism — an  old  trin¬ 
ity.  If  this  is  ignoble  it  is  because  human  nature  is  so. 
Or,  rather,  because  man  through  a  pathetic  delusion  in¬ 
sists  that  what  in  him  is  natural  is  ignoble.  The  fact 
remains.  Neither  proletarians  nor  plutocrats  were  as 
hectic,  were  as  sick  in  soul  with  the  war  fever  as  the 
intelligent,  moral,  thoughtful  bourgeoisie.  The  campus 
in  Central  City  became  like  an  infected  place.  The 
young  students  were  quite  cool  and  sane.  The  middle- 
aged  professors  with  homely  and  withered  wives  and 
strong  moral  opinions  shouted  and  flared  up  and 
wreaked  themselves  on  William  II — and  Kant  and 
Nietzsche  and  Wagner  and  even  Eucken.  When  they 
saw  me  their  eyes  glowed  strangely  or  turned  fiercely 
cold.  I  would  not  join  the  lynching-party.  I  had  a 
weakness  for  the  lynchee.  ...  I  was  regarded  as 

[204] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


good,  loyal  Southerners — guardians  of  Christianity, 
morality,  democracy — regard  a  “nigger-lover.”  The 
parallel  is  exact. 

nx 

Yet  my  weakness  for  the  lynchee  was  wholly  un¬ 
political  in  character.  It  included  neither  Prussian 
pastors  nor  Prussian  soldiers  nor  Bavarian  priests 
and  ultramontanes,  even  as  my  sympathies  cannot  in¬ 
clude  England’s  Black  and  Tan  constabulary  or  vulgar 
imperialists  or  the  fierce  parsons  of  our  own  Pro¬ 
testant  churches.  If,  as  I  freely  admitted,  I  did  not 
wish  to  see  the  empire  stricken  and  abased,  it  was  be¬ 
cause  it  happened  to  be  the  temporary  vessel,  how¬ 
ever  imperfect,  however  riddled  with  flaws,  of  a  spirit 
of  civilization  which  seemed  to  me  then  and  seems  to 
me  now  of  a  sovereign  preciousness  both  in  itself  and 
also  for  all  mankind.  I  can  illustrate  my  meaning  best 
from  the  present  moment.  The  year  is  1921.  The 
reparations  committee  is  sitting  in  Paris  seeking  to 
reconcile  the  extortion  of  an  incalculable  indemnity 
from  the  German  people  with  a  permanent  crippling 
of  that  people’s  industries,  shipping,  power  and 
wealth.  The  republic  that  signed  the  peace  of  Ver¬ 
sailles  is  discredited  at  home  and  abroad;  the  lost 
provinces  writhe  under  a  tyranny  compared  to  which 
the  stupid  Polish  policy  of  the  empire  was  merciful 
and  enlightened;  the  cities  and  industrial  districts  of 
what  was,  seven  years  ago,  the  most  orderly  and  the 
healthiest  country  in  recorded  history  are  gaunt  with 
hunger  and  rotten  with  disease.  In  Berlin,  the  pro¬ 
fiteers  celebrate  a  witches’  sabbath  of  wild  and  des¬ 
perate  debauchery.  The  bureaucratic  classes  who 

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lived  with  dignity  and  security  under  the  old  order  are 
in  a  state  of  suicidal  reactionary  fervor*  the  workers 
are  too  hungry  and  enfeebled  to  revolt.  Fallen  from 
a  position  of  boundless  power  and  respect  and  intel¬ 
lectual  preeminence  in  the  world,  this  nation  is  hum¬ 
bled  as  none  has  been  in  modern  times.  She  is  in  the 
dust  and  every  demagogue  and  fool  the  world  over  can 
void  his  venom  on  her.  Old  poets  spoke  of  the  terrors 
of  the  thing  they  called  Mutability  and  celebrated  the 
tragic  circumstances  of  the  fall  of  even  the  weakest 
and  vilest  princes.  Who,  among  men,  can  withhold 
from  a  proud  and  gifted  people  a  sombre  and  remorse¬ 
ful  sympathy?  And  yet.  ...  A  strange  thrill  of  life 
is  running  through  all  those  stricken  German  lands. 
Matthew  Arnold  called  that  minority  which  reflects 
and  transcends  the  passions  and  lives  creatively  the 
saving  remnant.  In  Germany  the  saving  remnant  has 
always  been  large  and  it  is  large  to-day.  Fools  and 
mere  tribesmen  crowd  the  cities  and  citadels,  but  each 
of  these  places  can  be  saved  not  by  one  righteous  man 
but  by  a  thousand.  It  seems  ironic  enough  to  use  the 
word  righteous;  for  righteous  in  a  rigid  sense  and 
according  to  standards  that  antedate  experience  is 
precisely  what  these  people  are  not.  What  they  have 
done  is  to  rend  inner  veils  and  to  substitute  for  the 
moral  nominalism  which  is  the  ultimate  source  of  the 
worlds  sickness  a  vision  that  discerns  men  and  things 
and  actions  in  their  real  and  unique  and  incomparable 
nature.  They  have  offered  defiance  to  that  gigantic 
Beast  which  Dante  saw  passing  mountains,  breaking 
through  walls  and  weapons,  polluting  the  whole  world 
* — that  uncleanly  image  of  Fraud  whose  face  is  the 

[206] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


face  of  a  just  man,  so  mild  is  its  aspect,  but  whose  body 
is  the  body  of  a  foul  serpent. 

La  faccia  sua  era  faccia  d’uom  giusto, 
tanto  benigna  avea  di  fuor  la  pelle ; 
e  d’un  serpente  tutto  l’altro  fusto. 

Life  is  far  deeper  and  more  intricate  than  most 
people  permit  themselves  to  know.  They  make  it 
shallow  and  simple  by  formulations:  a  man  can  love 
but  one  woman;  guilt  must  be  punished;  we  must  be 
unselfish.  Out  of  these  formulations  and  others  like 
them  they  build  bridges  over  the  abyss  of  the  soul. 
But  the  bridges  are  bridges  of  ice  which  only  a  careful 
chill  can  preserve.  A  day  comes  on  which  the  deeps 
begin  to  glow  and  the  bridge  bursts  and  there  is  chaos. 
The  Germans  of  whom  I  was  thinking  had  gone  on 
quests  into  those  deeps.  They  are  going  on  those  quests 
now.  They  were  careless  of  the  character  of  the  polity 
in  which  they  lived  before  the  war;  I  am  not  sure  that 
they  are  building  their  new  one  with  a  very  practical 
wisdom.  But  polities  crumble  and  one  form  of  the 
state  succeeds  another  and  so  far  man  has  invented 
none  that  is  not  irrational  and  tyrannical  at  its  core. 
The  best  we  can  achieve  is  an  inner  freedom,  moral 
and  intellectual  liberty,  the  power  of  standing  above 
the  state,  face  to  face  with  essential  things.  It  is  not 
only  the  poets  and  the  thinkers  of  Germany  who  have 
done  that,  but  undistinguished  and  unrecorded  men  by 
the  million — teachers  and  traders  and  waiters  and 
workingmen.  When  they  talk  they  talk  about  life,  not 
hbout  dead  formulae,  about  the  feelings  and  the 
thoughts  that  are,  not  about  those  they  would  have 

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others  entertain.  In  1916  a  very  humble  German  said 
to  me:  4 ‘ Life  is  curious.  I  was  a  socialist  in  the  old 
country  and  I’ve  got  no  use  for  the  government.  No, 
and  I  don’t  believe  in  conscription.  So  I  didn’t  think 
I’d  have  any  trouble  at  all.  But  when  people  talk  to 
me  about  the  war,  they  and  I  talk  about  different 
things  altogether.  They  talk  about  militarism  and 
Prussianism  and  they  don’t  mean  anything,  good  or 
bad,  that  really  exists.  They  mean  something  they’ve 
made  up  out  of  their  own  minds.  And  when  I  tell  them 
facts — mixed  facts — because  the  world  isn’t  a  simple 
place,  is  it? — they’re  mad  at  me  because  I  know  some¬ 
thing  definite  and  real  and  they  call  me  a  damned 
Hun.”  And  another  very  plain  man  who  came  to  me 
said:  “I’m  in  trouble  with  my  boss,  an  American 
gentleman,  because  I  had  a  love  affair  with  a  girl  in 
the  shop.  ‘But  you’re  a  married  man,’  he  said  to  me. 
‘I  know  it,’  I  answered.  ‘Then  what  right  did  you 
have  to  approach  this  girl?’  ‘I  don’t  know,’  I  said, 
‘but  I’ve  been  married  twenty  years  and  my  wife  is  a 
stringy  woman  with  a  bitter  temper.  And  this  girl 
liked  me  and  it  was  spring.  And  I  said  to  myself: 
here’s  this  war  and  the  world’s  gone  cruel  crazy  and 
pretty  soon  we’ll  all  be  dead  and  rotten.  There  was 
a  lilac  bush  in  the  garden  and  it  was  twilight  and  so 
I  kissed  her  a  few  times.  And  I  almost  thought  I  was 
young  again  and  back  in  the  old  country  and  life  was 
just  beginning  and  there  was  peace  and  a  little  hope 
and  beauty  in  the  world.’  The  boss  looked  at  me  as  if 
I  was  crazy.  ‘I’ll  have  no  immorality  around  here,’ 
he  shouted.  ‘You’re  fired!’  Now  what  sort  of  a  man 
is  this?  He  called  this  immorality  and  I  heard  him 
tell  some  young  fellows  about  the  immorality  of  going 

[208] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


to  a  street  full  of  bawdy  houses.  He  didn’t  pay  any 
attention  to  things,  you  see.  He  just  had  a  word — 
immorality — and  it  made  him  angry  at  others  and 
satisfied  with  himself.  ’  ’ 

A  word — and  it  made  him  angry  at  others  and  sat¬ 
isfied  with  himself.  .  .  .  Poor  Benecke !  He  could  get 
no  more  work  in  Central  City.  A  Hun  and  probably, 
like  all  Huns,  immoral  to  boot.  He  drifted  away.  But 
he  had  given  me  another  definition  of  the  evil  malignity 
that  lies  at  the  root  of  moralistic  generalizations  and 
a  fresh  sense  of  what  I  knew  to  be  the  saving  and  tri¬ 
umphant  virtue  of  the  people  to  whom  he  belonged. 

IV 

Thus,  too,  to-day,  poets  and  thinkers  and  publicists 
and  millions  of  men  and  women  are  striving  in  Ger¬ 
many  to  re-understand  and  re-create  a  world  in  chaos. 
Once  more  in  1921  as  in  1914  Germany  leads  the  world 
in  the  production  of  books.  There  is  trash  enough — 
morbid  rather  than  empty,  as  among  us.  But  there 
are  philosophies  and  visions  so  packed  with  thought 
and  experience  that  the  many  thousands  of  people 
who  buy  and  read  them,  as  the  editions  show,  must  be 
admitted  to  possess  a  culture  and  a  discipline  of  the 
mind  and  a  knowledge  of  their  own  souls  unheard  of 
in  any  other  age  or  land.  Likewise  the  imaginative 
literature — novels  and  plays  and  especially  the  books 
of  the  new  lyrical  movement — is  drawn  from  sources 
of  perception  and  reflection  which  the  average  cultured 
reader  in  other  countries  has  not  yet  reached  within 
himself.  I  do  not  expect  this  thing  which,  for  the  sake 
of  my  own  mind’s  integrity,  I  must  assert,  to  be  be- 

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lieved.  Nothing  is  so  deep-rooted  in  ns  as  a  sense  of 
our  ultimate  superiority.  We  may  appear  to  yield  on 
this  point  or  that.  At  the  core  of  the  self  is  a  granite- 
hard  conviction  of  the  betterness  of  that  self  and  its 
friends  and  its  group.  Such  is  the  spiritual  malady  of 
the  race.  If  once  we  could  stop  working  with  the  con¬ 
cepts  “better”  and  “worse”  which  we  identify  with 
higher  and  lower  and  so,  in  a  primitive  and  subcon¬ 
scious  way,  with  above  and  below  in  physical  modes 
of  being — master,  slave,  slayer,  slain:  if  we  could 
bring  ourselves  to  think  in  terms  of  fruitful  co-existent 
qualities  in  the  psychical  world,  we  would  not  struggle 
against  such  cognitions  as  I  am  trying  to  convey;  we 
would  have  a  much  larger  chance  of  deriving  our  self- 
respect  from  serenity  and  justice  rather  than  from 
wilful  ignorance  and  rage. 

In  Central  City  I  once  spoke  to  a  colleague,  a  pro¬ 
fessor  of  political  science,  of  the  literature  and  art 
and  thought  of  the  Germans  and  of  the  wide  dissem¬ 
ination  of  these  things  among  the  people  and  made  a 
plea  for  an,  at  least,  inquiring  attitude  toward  such  a 
nation.  He  replied  that  what  I  told  him  was  doubtless 
true,  but  that  it  did  not  to  his  mind  constitute  a  claim 
to  high  national  culture  which  resided  rather  in  polit¬ 
ical  vigilance  and  political  activity.  I  did  not  point 
out  to  him — he  would  have  regarded  it  as  presumptu¬ 
ous — the  actual  political  supineness  of  Americans; 
their  extreme  suggestibility  and  their  utter  careless¬ 
ness  as  to  the  quarters  whence  their  winds  of  doctrine 
blow.  I  saw  so  clearly  that  he  and  I  were  shouting 
across  a  gulf.  Literature  and  art  and  philosophv  were 
to  him  not  expressions  and  therefore  forms  of  life,  not 
the  spiritual  organs  by  which  men  understand  and 

[210] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


intercommtmicate  experience;  they  were  to  him  deoo- 
rative  additions  to  life,  like  tin  cornices  on  a  shop 
front.  And  it  would  have  been  useless  to  tell  him  that 
the  aesthetic  and  philosophical  saturation  of  great 
masses  of  the  German  people  had  naturally  led  them 
to  esteem  political  action  lightly.  For  all  such  action 
implies  hard  limitation.  To  choose  such  action  at  all 
means  a  devotion  to  narrowly  defined  policies  of 
whose  insufficiency  and  mere  opportunism  the  reflec¬ 
tive  mind  is  at  once  aware.  Thus  in  every  day  life  the 
unreflective  man  who  is  also  the  energetic  one  has  the 
philosopher  at  his  mercy.  To  know  little  is  to  dare 
easily,  to  have  looked  upon  all  sides  of  all  mortal  ques¬ 
tions  is  to  come  near  paralysis.  Rude  men  in  primi¬ 
tive  communities  pass  judgment  and  execute  sentences 
in  matters  that  would  have  left  Jesus  dumb  and  So¬ 
crates  puzzled.  Then  they  ride  off,  these  posses  and 
lynchers,  and  eat  their  dinners  in  peace. 

Yet  the  young  poets  in  Germany  who  are  listened 
to  by  thousands  and  thousands — Franz  Werfel  and 
Walter  Hasenclever  and  many  others — are  crying  out 
for  more  inwardness,  not  less,  for  a  spiritualization 
and  conquest  and  absorption  into  the  mind  of  all  things 
and  all  men;  for  a  suspension  of  all  moral  judgment, 
all  strife  and  for  the  remoulding  of  the  world  through 
love.  They  do  not  heed  the  traders  and  chafferers  and 
diplomats — Stinnes  no  more  than  Morgan,  Simons  no 
more  than  Lloyd  George.  They  are  bent  upon  another 
business  and  men  and  women  who  lack  bread  and  meat 
buy  the  books  of  these  poets  and  creators  of  higher 
realities  and  go  home  and  read  and  transcend  hunger 
and  cold,  embargoes  and  reparations  and  the  loss  of 
mines.  And  they  lift  their  heads  from  their  books, 

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these  readers,  and  hear  that  Lloyd  George  reaffirms 
the  single  and  absolute  guilt  of  Germany  in  the  war 
and  for  a  moment  they  remember  a  world  which  is  still 
ruled  by  such  hollow  and  such  savage  fictions.  But  it 
is  only  for  a  moment.  Their  bluish  lids  are  lowered. 
They  read  on.  They  are  rebuilding  the  broken  uni¬ 
verse  in  their  souls. 

v 

"What  could  I  do  with  this  vision  and  this  knowl¬ 
edge  and  this  protest  of  mine  in  Central  City?  Men 
talked  such  arrant  nonsense  that  I  committed  a  hun¬ 
dred  indiscretions,  overstated  and  misstated  the  inti¬ 
mate  truths  that  I  possessed  and  even,  on  the  great 
principle  of  John  Stuart  Mill  that  no  truth,  however 
partial,  needs  so  sorely  to  be  emphasized  as  that  which 
a  particular  hour  in  history  derides  or  disregards, 
joined  certain  friends  and  colleagues  in  explaining  to 
a  technically  neutral  country  the  political  and  military 
actions  of  the  German  government.  I  did  not  count 
the  consequences  nor,  at  bottom,  greatly  fear  them. 
Others  were  dependent  on  me  and  I  did  not  dare  to 
fling  away  the  meager  sustenance  which  the  university 
doled  out  to  me.  But  I  knew  very  firmly,  though  I  did 
not  always  permit  that  knowledge  to  reach  my  con¬ 
sciousness,  that  life  could  not  permanently  be  bounded 
for  me  by  that  campus  and  that  town.  If  by  defending 
my  mind’s  integrity,  a  catastrophe  came  .  .  .  well,  I 
almost  awaited  it  as  one  awaits  rain  and  thunder  on 
a  day  of  unbearable  sultriness. 

When  America  entered  the  war  the  president  of 
the  university  sent  for  me.  A  tall,  thick,  old  man  with 
a  hoarse,  monotonous  voice  and  a  large,  determined, 

[212] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


self-righteous  mouth.  A  mouth  like  William  Jennings 
Bryan’s — half  business  man's,  half  fanatic’s.  The 
intellectual  equipment  of  a  Presbyterian  elder  in  a 
small  town;  the  economic  views  of  a  professional 
strike-breaker  tempered  by  a  willingness  to  be  charit¬ 
able  to  the  subservient  poor;  the  aesthetic  and  philo¬ 
sophic  vision  of  the  Saturday  Evening  Post.  He  talked 
to  me  like  a  war  editorial  in  the  New  York  Evening 
Telegram  and  tried  to  make  that  talk  persuasive  to 
me.  He  who  believed,  let  us  say,  in  the  virgin  birth 
of  Christ,  tried  to  convince  me  that  the  countrymen 
of  Dehmel  and  Hauptmann  and  Strauss  and  Einstein 
had  mediaeval  minds.  A  perverse  imp  leapt  up  in  me. 
I  translated  some  observations  of  Goethe  and  Shelley 
and  John  Stuart  Mill  and  Whitman  into  his  vernacular 
and  spoke.  His  eyes  grew  a  little  hard  and  forbidding 
and  shifted  to  the  blotter  on  his  desk.  But  he  thought 
me  more  unpractical  idealist — his  euphemism  for  fool 
— than  knave  and  promised,  quite  sincerely,  that  he 
would  guard  my  interests  unless  his  hand  were  forced. 
He  made  a  virtue  of  this  moral  opportunism.  Per¬ 
sonally,  he  assured  me,  again  sincerely,  that  he  was 
willing  to  be  tolerant ;  if  the  herd  stampeded  he  would 
trample  with  the  best.  Such  was  the  notion  of  democ¬ 
racy  held  by  this  essentially  good  and  honest  man. 

I  expected  no  more.  But  my  friend,  the  professor 
of  philosophy,  failed  me.  Not  personally.  They  were 
all  kind  enough.  But  intellectually.  And  that  was 
worse.  He  who  had  always  protested  against  the 
notion  that  truth  could  be  discovered  by  committees 
now  made  the  war-psychosis  of  the  crowd  his  criterion 
of  conduct  and  opinion.  “How  about  the  splendor  of 
being  in  a  minority,  of  resisting  the  mass,  of  suffering 

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for  an  unpopular  conviction,?”  I  asked  him.  He  stul¬ 
tified  and  denied  himself,  his  intellectual  past,  his 
moral  character.  He  thundered  against  the  ninety- 
three  German  intellectuals  who  had  believed  what  their 
government  had  told  them  and  himself  accepted  as 
gospel  the  reports  of  the  capitalistic  and  jingo  press. 
The  German  intellectuals  are  dead  or  have  recanted 
either  explicitly  in  words  or  implicitly  by  supporting 
the  revolution.  My  friend  has  not  been  heard  from. 
He  still  teaches  philosophy. 

The  crash  came  in  a  curious  and,  rightly  looked 
upon,  an  amusing  way.  In  1916  I  had  published  a  little 
book  on  the  modern  movement  in  German  literature. 
It  was  an  unpolitical  little  book.  It  tried  to  convey  a 
spirit,  an  atmosphere,  a  mood  ...  to  show  that  the 
best  living  writers  were  liberals,  radicals,  cultivators 
of  a  Goethean  freedom.  I  said,  among  other  things, 
that  Nietzsche  was  indisputably  one  of  the  great  mas¬ 
ters  of  prose.  The  book  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  real- 
estate  broker.  One  must  savor  that  fact.  One  must 
visualize  the  pudgy  gentleman  at  his  golden  oak  roll¬ 
top  desk  in  his  private  office.  He  has  been  reading  the 
editorial  in  his  paper;  he  is  fired  to  do  his  duty  as  a 
man  and  an  American.  There  is  something  wonderful 
in  the  supreme  innocence  and  directness  of  his  mental 
processes.  What,  shall  a  man  be  supported  by  the 
people’s  money  who  glorifies  that  which  our  sons  are 
going  out  to  destroy  at  the  cost  of  their  blood?  He 
summons  his  secretary  who  pats  her  sleek  hair  with 
brilliantly  manicured  fingers  and  shifts  her  chewing- 
gum  to  the  other  cheek.  He  dictates  and  a  glow  fills 
his  bosom.  The  letter  goes  to  the  president  and  the 
deans  of  the  university,  to  the  governor  of  the  state, 

[214] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


to  the  trustees,  to  senators.  The  real  estate  broker — 
like  Dwight  Deacon  in  Zona  Gale’s  excellent  story — 
goes  virtuously  home  and,  at  the  head  of  his  domestic 
board,  impresses  an  admiring  family  with  his  patriotic 
vigor,  his  acumen,  his  importance.  He  looks  instruc¬ 
tively  over  his  glasses,  then  for  a  moment  glumly: 
‘ ‘ Vera,  did  I  hear  you  giggle?  You  may  leave  the 
table.  Upon  my  word!  Well,  as  I  was  saying:  these 
disloyalists  .  .  .  seditious  talk  .  .  .  undermine  morale 
.  .  .  contaminate  the  young  .  .  .  dooty  of  every  wide 
awake  citizen.  .  .  It  goes  on  and  on,  the  talk  of 
the  eternal  real  estate  broker,  it  goes  on  in  peace  as 
well  as  in  war:  Be  like  me,  be  like  me,  think  and  feel 
as  I  do,  or  I  will  drive  you  out,  burn  you,  hang,  draw 
and  quarter  you  and  lick  my  lips  at  the  trickle  of  your 
blood.  .  .  .  And  I,  in  my  own  small  and  dusty  way, 
was  the  eternal  outcast,  rebel,  the  other-thinking  one — 
guilty  before  the  herd,  guiltless  in  the  dwelling-places 
of  the  permanent,  breaker  of  taboos,  creator  of  new 
values,  doomed  to  defeat  on  this  day  in  this  little 
grimy  corner  of  the  universe,  invincible  and  inextin¬ 
guishable  as  a  type.  Shall  I  ever  conquer  the  real 
estate  broker?  Shall  I  ever  absorb  him  into  myself? 
And  if  I  ever  absorb  him  into  myself  shall  I  not  be 
he  again?  That  is  the  question  at  the  core  of  human 
history.  And  it  is  fathomless. 

VT 

The  president  balked  a  little  at  the  real  estate 
broker.  Not  for  any  deep  reason.  Only  he  had  a  dumb 
feeling  that  the  real  estate  broker  was  attacking  the 
thing  from  a  wrong  angle  and  interfering  with  his 
own  paternalistic  and,  upon  the  whole,  humane  and 

[215] 


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kindly  management  of  faculty  affairs.  Yet  he  was 
gradually  being  saved  the  nuisance  of  a  final  decision. 
The  matter  was  being  taken  out  of  his  hands. 

The  campus  had  been  turned  into  a  training-camp 
and  swarmed  with  youths  in  khaki.  They  studied, 
slept,  ate,  drilled,  talked  in  mechanically  formed 
groups.  A  slow,  stinging  horror  seized  my  flesh  and 
crept  into  my  bones.  They  were  being  trained  to  kill 
and  be  killed,  to  mutilate  and  to  be  mutilated.  They 
were  very  cheerful.  Each,  at  the  innermost  point  of 
consciousness,  carried  the  invincible,  mystical  assur¬ 
ance  that  he  would  come  out  unscathed.  Each,  like 
all  of  us,  was  unable  to  imagine  his  own  death.  For 
the  universe  is  unimaginable  to  the  individual  without 
his  consciousness  of  it :  his  perception  of  it  creates  and 
upholds  it.  Since  he  believes  in  its  permanence,  he 
believes,  despite  reason  and  experience,  in  his  own. 
Such  is  the  mystical  and  fatal  delusion  which,  dis¬ 
guised  under  the  names  of  patriotism,  courage,  sac¬ 
rifice,  makes  conscription  and  modern  war  possible. 
If  we  could  rip  that  delusion  asunder,  unswathe  the 
consciousness  of  common  men  from  these  sticky  layers, 
the  enslaving  state  would  crumble.  The  sight  of  those 
cheery,  healthy  boys  turned  me  sick.  I  saw  them 
blinded,  waving  bloody  stumps,  rotten  with  gangrene 
in  trenches  under  fire.  I  rebelled  against  that  place  of 
irony  and  horror;  I  refused  to  take  any  precautions. 
A  leprous  sun  seemed  to  bum  over  Central  City.  Mid¬ 
dle-aged  men  and  women  roared  and  wheezed  and 
sweated  with  hatred  and  patriotism  and  urged  these 
young  bodies  to  hasten  to  hurl  themselves  into  blood 
and  ooze  and  ordure. 

An  oily  voice,  a  sleek,  voluble  voice  with  a  hard 

[216] 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


contradictory  snicker  in  it  came  to  me  over  the  tele¬ 
phone.  My  presence  was  required  on  such  a  day  at 
such  an  hour  in  the  office  of  the  district  attorney.  The 
voice  purred  reassuringly  and  then  repeated  the  order 
with  a  sudden,  lustfully  cruel  bark. 

It  was  the  owner  of  that  voice  who  received  me — 
white-haired,  ruddy,  cold-eyed  but  with  a  set,  wheed¬ 
ling  smile  fixed  under  a  thick,  heavy,  dogged  nose.  He 
took  me  into  the  district  attorney’s  office,  a  large, 
square,  ordinary  lawyer’s  room  with  shabby  desks  and 
swivel  chairs  and  rusty  calf-skin  volumes  with  red 
labels.  Sharp  sunshine  poured  in  through  the  tall  win¬ 
dows;  a  pigeon  sped  past;  a  bough  tapped  against  the 
stonework.  The  district  attorney  sat  back  in  his  chair,  a 
big,  dark,  bald  man,  not  fat  but  fleshy;  cold,  meanly 
sensual,  a  careless  begetter  of  children,  a  good  ‘ ‘  pro¬ 
vider,”  a  family  man,  a  politician,  a  ‘ ‘  handshaker.” 
.  .  .  He  shook  hands  with  me.  I  looked  at  his  enor¬ 
mous  cheeks,  his  small,  official  eyes.  A  huge  expanse 
of  shirt  extended  from  his  long  chin  to  his  belt.  There 
was  something  monumental  about  the  man,  but  also 
something  obscene.  I  felt  both  the  impenetrability 
of  him  and  the  raw,  voracious  appetites.  He  was,  of 
all  things,  jovial!  “Well,  professor,  I  thought  we’d 
better  have  a  talk.”  His  pretense  that  we  were  good 
fellows  together  was  odious.  “What  have  you  against 
me?”  I  asked.  He  leaned  forward.  “A  stack  of  evi¬ 
dence  this  high.”  “Let  me  see  the  evidence  and  con¬ 
front  me  with  the  persons  who  provided  it.”  “We 
don’t  do  that,”  he  snapped.  “Then  how  can  I  tell  what 
you’re  talking  about?”  He  sat  back  comfortably  and 
drawled:  “Didn’t  you  say  that  if  America  entered 
the  war.  ...”  I  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  said  none 

[217] 


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of  the  things  he  repeated.  In  the  privacy  of  my  office 
at  the  university  I  had  made  remarks  that  malice  had 
twisted,  broadened,  coarsened  and  then  communicated 
to  him.  I  at  once  suspected  the  stupid  woman  who  had 
probably  written  him  anonymous  letters.  I  pointed 
out  to  him  that  the  evidence  was  garbled,  not  of  a 
character  that  would  be  admitted  in  any  American 
court  of  law  and  that  it  referred  exclusively  to  the 
period  of  American  neutrality  during  which,  from  the 
narrowest  and  most  autocratic  point  of  view,  I  had 
been  free  to  say  what  I  chose.  Instead  of  replying  he 
suddenly  sprang  up  and  roared.  ‘ 4  What  have  you  ever 
done  to  show  your  patriotism?  What  have  you  ever 
done  for  this  country V9  “I  have  taught  and  written. 
.  .  .  He  roared  me  down.  “You  liked  to  do  that! 
What’ve  you  ever  done  for  your  country,  I  ask  you!,, 
The  thing  went  on  for  an  hour.  I  tried  to  reach  his 
reason.  He  didn’t  want  that  to  happen.  At  the  end 
of  the  session  he  shook  his  head  gloomily.  He  would 
see.  .  .  . 

Upon  the  whole  he  evidently  thought  me  small 
game.  Several  influential  members  of  the  faculty 
wrote  him  in  my  behalf ;  the  president  sent  him  a  mes¬ 
sage;  he  consented  to  my  remaining  in  the  service  of 
the  state.  But  I  did  not  remain.  The  colleagues  who 
pleaded  for  me  did  so  not  because  they  believed  in 
freedom,  but  because  they  had  a  personal  kindness  for 
Jne  and  some  respect  for  my  character;  the  president 
protected  me  because  he  knew  that  I  was  poor  and  a 
good  teacher  and  because  he  did  not  consider  my 
wrongheadedness  grave  enough  to  warrant  Mary’s 
being  exposed  to  material  suffering.  The  tacit  under¬ 
standing  was  that  I  could  buy  a  continued  tenure  of 

[218]  ' 


MYTH  AND  BLOOD 


my  job  by  silence,  conformity,  slavish  submission.  I 
asked  for  a  sabbatical  year  that  was  due  me  and  was 
granted  the  favor. 

I  fared  very  well  and  I  am  not  insensitive  to  kind¬ 
ness.  But  what  I  had  hoped  for  came  from  no  quarter 
— a  recognition,  however  faint,  of  the  tenableness  of 
my  intellectual  position.  A  German  colleague,  an  ex¬ 
quisitely  lovable,  gifted,  gentle  soul,  was  fired  without 
mercy.  He  was  ill  in  body  and  had  a  frail  wife — an 
American  woman — and  three  small  children.  A  poet 
and  a  philosopher,  he  wandered  about  selling  books, 
tortured  by  the  dull  surfaces  of  an  unfeeling  world. 
He  finally  took  a  small  position  in  Mexico.  There,  at 
the  age  of  thirty-five,  he  died  the  other  day.  Hardship 
had  undermined  his  strength;  the  process  begun  in 
Central  City  reached  a  fatal  conclusion.  Yet  the  men 
there  knew  the  beauty  of  his  mind,  his  complete  polit¬ 
ical  harmlessness,  the  fact  that  he  had  not  come  to  us 
an  immigrant  but  had  been  summoned  as  an  exchange 
teacher  to  a  great  American  University.  But  they 
were  utterly  callous  to  his  fate.  They  had  studied  and 
philosophized  with  him  and  broken  bread  with  him. 
They  cast  him  out  to  die.  .  .  . 

Why  did  they  relent  to  me?  Because  of  the  native 
tongue  in  my  head,  the  things  I  had  written,  the  fact 
that  in  all  fundamental  senses  I  am  an  American.  A 
blind,  half-conscious  feeling  of  solidarity  with  me 
guided  them,  neither  the  idea  of  justice  nor  that  of 
freedom.  Yet  this  was  a  university  and  there  they 
taught  then  and  there  they  teach  now  Plato  and  Kant, 
Montaigne  and  Voltaire,  Goethe  and  Shelley  and  even 
Walt  Wdiitman  who  “beat  the  gong  of  revolt  and 
stopped  with  them  that  plot  and  conspire,’ ’ 

[219] 


CHAPTER  X. 


The  World  In  Chaos 

i 

A  quiet  corner  of  old  Hew  York  seemed  a  refuge 
from  glare  and  hubbub.  Around  the  corner  was  a 
tavern  where  one  could  drink  beer  and  listen  to  music. 
The  fiddlers  were  still  Hungarians  who  played  Grieg 
and  even  Brahms  and  Magyar  dances  and  Russian 
folk-melodies.  One  could  talk  to  one’s  friends  in 
whatever  language  the  mood  and  the  subject  de¬ 
manded.  We  sat  there  even  as  other  like-minded 
groups  sat  in  London  and  Paris  and  Munich  waiting 
for  the  madness  of  mankind  to  spend  itself.  The 
lamps  of  the  tavern  had  orange-colored  shades,  the 
wainscoating  was  black  with  age.  The  place  was  filled 
with  a  soothing  dusk  and  the  blended  odor  of  beer  and 
tobacco  and  Wiener  Schnitzel.  I  was,  at  least,  back 
in  civilization.  There  were  no  sweet  slops ;  there  was 
no  gabble  consisting  largely  of  “dope,”  “guy,” 
“sport,”  “case,”  “jazz,”  “Hun.”  It  is  quite  easy  to 
jest.  But  beneath  the  easy  jest  is  a  hard  fact.  Beer 
and  wine  and  tobacco  are  the  companions  of  poetry 
and  philosophy  and  love;  soda-water  and  banana- 
splits  and  sport  not  as  a  diversion  but  as  a  business,  of 
moral  lynching  and  the  worst  forms  of  sex  slavery. 

[220] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


.  .  .  That  tavern  is  gone  now,  swept  away  by  the 
barbarism  of  the  Neo-Puritans. 

For  some  weeks  Mary  and  I  relaxed  our  minds  and 
nerves.  But  my  resources  would  not  permit  me  to  re¬ 
main  quite  idle  and  an  old  friend  brought  me  the  offer 
of  a  mastership  in  a  private  school.  To  teach  English 
and  Latin  to  boys  seemed  a  tolerable  enough  prospect. 

The  huge  building  arises  before  me,  the  immense 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  building  on  the  ninth  floor  of  which  the 
Harley  School  was  housed.  On  the  very  first  day  of 
my  activity  a  blast  from  some  icy  and  infernal  region 
seemed  to  smite  my  nerves.  On  the  third  day  I  knew 
that  I  had  entered  the  lowest  depth  of  civilization 
where  there  are  elevators  and  modern  plumbing  and 
scientific  ventilation  and  hygiene  and  cleanliness  and 
morality  and  where  the  soul  is  dead.  There  were  one 
hundred  boys,  varying  in  age  from  twelve  to  seventeen. 
They  were  nearly  all  the  sons  of  wealthy  tradesmen, 
brokers  and  manufacturers.  They  brought  with  them 
from  their  homes  a  stony  contempt  for  literature,  art 
and  learning,  for  any  form  of  reflection,  for  all  toler¬ 
ance,  gentleness,  humanity — for  everything  except 
money,  machines  and  blind  force  when  that  force  was 
exerted  by  them  or  in  the  direction  of  their  strictly 
material  interests.  I  did  not  make  these  observations 
hastily.  I  tried  to  exert  a  softening  and  a  saving  in¬ 
fluence  on  one  boy  after  another.  So  did  one  other 
member  of  the  teaching  staff — a  cultivated,  spiritual- 
minded,  elderly  New  Englander.  He  and  I  compared 
notes  day  after  day.  We  were  dealing  with  souls 
killed  by  machines  and  by  the  doctrine  of  force  before 
they  had  had  a  chance  to  be  born.  They  listened  to 
neither  my  old  friend  nor  to  me;  they  were  impene- 

[221] 


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trable  to  the  simplest  and  most  picturesque  historical 
or  literary  instruction.  But  they  attended  earnestly 
to  the  malignant  moral  drivel  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secre¬ 
taries  which  consisted  of  two  negative  admonitions: 
be  ignorant  of  sex  and  drink  no  alcohol,  and  of  one 
positive  one:  smash! — smash  the  rival  team,  school, 
and  later  the  rival  business  or  factory;  smash  the  Hun 
and  the  Bolshevik  abroad;  smash  the  other- thinking 
one — liberal,  socialist,  foreigner — at  home.  And — this 
was  the  constant  corollary — in  order  to  smash  success¬ 
fully,  “get  together,”  do  team-work,  never  think,  feel, 
act,  except  with  and  through  your  particular  pack. 
This  gospel  of  mass  brutality  and  individual  cowardice 
and  dishonor  was  studded  in  the  chapel  talks  with  the 
names  of  successful  men  as  exemplars — insurance 
magnates,  railroad  kings,  oil  monopolists — and  was 
offered — such  was  the  effrontery  of  these  creatures — 
in  the  name  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

The  great  steel  and  concrete  building  is  in  a  shabby, 
swarming  neighborhood  near  a  railroad  station.  There 
are  lunch  rooms  and  open-air  food-stands  at  every 
corner.  The  waiting  room  of  the  railroad  station  is 
always  crowded.  The  pupils  of  the  Harley  school, 
many  of  whom  came  to  school  in  their  motor  cars, 
were  always  talking  about  the  “waps”  and  “dagos” 
and  “kikes”  who  drifted  to  and  fro  on  those  streets 
and  squares.  They  spoke  of  them  and  laughed  with 
a  cold,  empty  derision,  a  curiously  unmotivated  malig¬ 
nity.  How  good  those  common  people  seemed  to  me; 
how  eloquent  was  the  trouble  and  contemplation  in 
their  eyes !  I  talked  with  the  street-car  men  and  ditch- 
diggers,  barbers  and  prostitutes.  These  people’s  nat¬ 
ural  thoughts  were  very  far  from  the  war.  It  had 

[222] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


been  driven,  an  alien  and  meaningless  thing,  into  their 
consciousness.  “The  kings  made  it,”  they  said,  “the 
rich  made  it.”  An  unlettered  Lithuanian  plasterer 
said:  “Life  is  hard  in  Central  Europe.  The  people 
have  not  land  enough  to  grow  their  own  food.  Either 
the  big  rulers,  East  and  West,  must  parcel  out  the 
world-markets  justly  or  there  will  be  famine  and  revo¬ 
lution.”  He  caught  sight  of  a  policeman  and  added 
as  by  rote :  “I’m  for  the  allies.  Too  much  militarism 
in  Germany.  ’ 9 

There  was  a  school  supper  and  I  met  the  fathers 
of  my  pupils.  They  were  mellower,  of  course,  and 
their  manners  and  speech  were  suaver.  But  they  made 
the  psychical  picture  complete.  Their  contempt  for 
any  form  of  thinking  was  indescribable.  In  their 
minds  the  universe  was  like  the  blue-print  of  a 
machine.  Every  detail  was  fixed  and  provided  for  and 
established  by  some  sanction  which  they  could  not  ex¬ 
plain  but  would  not  endure  to  have  questioned.  I 
deliberately  conversed  in  terms  that  differed  slightly, 
but  only  slightly,  from  the  verbal  formulae  of  the  con¬ 
ventional  newspaper  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretaries 
concerning  the  world  situation.  Fourteen  hours  later 
a  rumor  had  reached  the  head-master  that  there  was 
an  unsafe  man  in  his  school. 

A  good  many  intellectuals,  deceived  by  historical 
analogies,  by  the  public  gifts  of  a  few  super-pluto¬ 
crats,  by  a  fitful  patronage  of  the  arts  exercised  by 
wealthy  Jews,  assign  to  the  financial  and  industrial 
bosses  the  qualities  and  functions  of  an  oligarchy.  But 
the  oligarchs  are  rich  without  splendor  and  powerful 
without  imagination.  They  are  not  Medici ;  they  are  not 
even  Junkers.  They  are  only  grocers.  These  men  of 

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large  affairs  have  pigmy  intelligences,  the  moral  preju¬ 
dices  of  villagers,  the  tastes  not  even  of  the  tap-room, 
but  of  the  4 4 parlor.’ *  They  influence  legislation  and 
own  the  press  and  we  have  prohibition,  censorships, 
vice  crusades.  They  are  not  aristocrats  on  the  lowest 
plane.  They  are  not  even  amusing  like  the  Prince 
Regent  and  his  strutting  “bucks,”  not  even  pictur¬ 
esque  and  cynical  like  the  French  gentlemen  of  the 
ancien  regime }  they  are  stupid,  uninteresting,  meanly 
barbarous. 

n 

The  posters  on  the  walls  and  fences  bothered  me. 
Do  you  remember  them!  “The  Prussian  Cur,”  “The 
Hun,  His  mark.”  These  posters  with  their  splashes 
of  crude  red  and  their  pictures  of  ape  or  wolf-like 
creatures  bore  no  relation,  of  course,  either  to  the 
people  against  whom  they  were  directed  nor  to  the 
minds  of  the  combatants  on  either  side.  They  revealed 
a  brutality  and  obscenity  in  the  spirits  that  conceived 
and  the  hands  that  executed  them  which  kindled  in 
me  a  little  flame  of  terror  at  the  civilization  which, 
unconsciously  but  firmly,  I  had  always  held  to  be  fun¬ 
damentally  humane  and  secure.  Nothing  seemed  im¬ 
possible  any  longer.  The  barbarities  of  history,  the 
sacking  of  cities,  the  useless  slaughter  of  men,  the  sell¬ 
ing  of  people  into  slavery,  the  butchery  for  matters 
of  opinion  and  conscience — all  these  had  been  but  as 
pictures  of  perished  things  to  heighten  by  a  melan¬ 
choly  yet  not  unpleasing  contrast  the  glow  of  one’s 
own  hearth,  the  serenity  of  one’s  mind.  All  that  faith 
in  the  sure,  essential  decency  of  life  was  broken.  No 
wonder  that  the  courts  passed  inhuman  sentences,  that 

[224] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


men  were  mobbed  and  lynched  and  tortured  in  prisons 
and  that  the  newspapers  grew  daily  more  lecherous 
in  their  appetite  for  blood.  .  .  . 

The  songs  in  the  music-halls  bothered  me. 

“America,  she  needs  you  like  a  mother. 

Will  you  throw  your  mother  down?  .  .  . 

“Like  Washington  crossed  the  Delaware 
Pershing  will  cross  the  Rhine.” 

The  crafty  blending  here  of  natural  pieties  with  pack- 
ferocity  and  pack-pride  was  hit  upon  by  an  old 
and  deadly  instinct.  Love  was  played  upon  and  lurk¬ 
ing  fear.  To  stamp  out  from  the  beginning  any  stir¬ 
ring  of  humane  compunction,  the  public  enemy  was 
carefully  stripped  of  any  of  the  characteristics  that 
distinguish  man.  Another  very  old  and  very  effective 
trick.  “You  are  not  dealing,  countrymen, 9 9  Cicero 
said  in  his  fourth  invective  against  Antony,  “you  are 
not  contending  with  an  enemy  with  whom  any  sort  of 
peace  is  possible.  For  he  does  not  merely,  as  he  once 
did,  desire  your  slavery,  but  in  his  madness  lusts  for 
your  very  blood.  His  favorite  game  is  one  of  blood,  of 
slaughter,  of  murdering  citizens  openly.  You  are  not 
dealing,  fellow  citizens,  with  a  criminal  and  wicked 
man,  but  with  a  monstrous  and  loathesome  beast.  .  .  . 
cum  immane  taetraque  belua.  .  .  .  ”  (I  tried  to  point 
out  the  analogy  to  my  pupils.  They  nudged  each  other. 
They  were  sure  I  was  quite  mad.) 

I  used  to  watch  the  great  audiences  in  the  music- 
halls.  There  were  no  mobile  faces,  no  speaking  faces, 
nor  many  such  as  showed  the  scars  of  passionate  ex¬ 
citement  or  searching  experience.  Neither  were  there 

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spiritualized  and  contemplative  faces.  The  passions 
behind  these  eyes  were  not  spent,  nor  were  they  sub¬ 
dued  ;  they  were  neither  exercised  nor  controlled.  They 
were  hounds  not  held  in  leash  by  their  owners,  but 
leashless  hounds  that  cringed  and  fawned  before  the 
visible  lash  and  rod  of  this  society  and  morality  with 
its  peculiar  law  and  order.  Native  or  foreign  born, 
Jew  or  Gentile — these  faces  were  the  faces  of  modern 
Christians :  natural,  pagan  men  living  under  the  legal¬ 
ized  tyranny  of  the  sickly  asceticism  of  Paul.  Fear 
aping  solemn  resignation,  or  flabby,  elderly  content 
was  in  their  eyes  and  on  the  countenances  of  the  young 
a  furtive  gaiety,  a  harsh,  empty  delight  conscious  of 
its  own  brevity  and  unimportance  in  a  world  given 
over  to  morality  and  business.  ...  No  inner  pride,  no 
natural  erectness  sustained  these  souls.  So,  in  their 
drained  and  inhibited  lives,  they  fasten  their  pride  to 
mean  things — skill  at  a  foolish  game,  a  garment,  a  bit 
'of  cooking,  a  personal  oddity,  a  tawdry  virtue  lacked 
by  a  neighbor.  But  these  things  do  not  suffice.  There 
is  always  to  be  observed  a  background  of  querulous 
irritation.  Hence,  by  a  pitiful  device,  men  transfer 
their  pride  to  forces  outside  of  themselves — a  fraternal 
order,  their  bosses,  the  state.  When  the  poor  muddle- 
headed,  enslaved  clerk  says:  “My  concern  did  a  three 
million  dollar  business  last  year,”  or  “America  can 
lick  creation,”  he  substitutes  an  alien  and  essentially 
hostile  force  for  his  own  soul  which  that  very  force 
has  robbed  of  the  power  of  being  self-sustaining,  happy 
and  free.  Therefore  when,  during  the  last  year  of  the 
war,  I  heard  these  audiences  bay  and  cheer  the  foul 
attacks  upon  an  enemy  who  was  not  theirs,  since  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  enemy  except  in  an  evil  and  con- 


r226] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


structive  and  lying  sense,  and  when  I  saw  them  trans¬ 
fer  their  self-respect  to  their  slave-driver,  the  moral 
and  political  state,  I  had  an  old,  old  vision — the 
huge,  monstrous  idol,  the  sacrificial  fires,  the  victims 
driven  by  a  lust  for  self-immolation  into  the  scorching 
flames.  Yes,  those  dim,  far-off  ancestors  of  mine  had 
laid  hold  upon  a  profound  truth :  idols  are  purely  evil. 
Alas,  they  themselves  set  up  the  most  menacing  of 
idols — a  theocratic  state.  And  that  state  persists.  For 
the  modem  state,  whenever  it  is  most  hotly  bent  upon 
oppression  within  and  slaughter  without,  declares  that 
good  and  therefore  God  are  on  its  side,  that  it,  indeed, 
embodies  the  purposes  of  God,  and  so  the  state  be¬ 
comes  theocratic  by  its  own  fiat  and  an  idol  and  men, 
who  are  worshipping  animals,  writhe  in  their  blood 
and  shame  and  spiritual  nakedness  at  the  idol’s  feet. 

A  black  year.  The  war-fever  throbbed.  The  boys 
at  the  Harley  school  turned  to  me  each  day  their  bur¬ 
nished  and  impenetrable  faces.  My  father  died.  A 
subtly  but  relentlessly  hostile  environment  and  an  un¬ 
worthy  occupation  had  long  ago  broken  him.  His  mind 
had  slipped  into  a  twilight  region  of  settled  despair. 
In  one  of  his  last  moments  of  lucidity  he  had  spoken 
sorrowfully  of  the  war  and  hummed  an  air  of  Mozart 
and  then  wept  gently.  Thereafter  he  sank  into  an  un¬ 
relieved  melancholy.  When  he  came  to  die  there  was 
nothing  more  to  be  hoped  for  him  and  so  I  felt  no  pang 
for  his  death,  only  for  his  life  and  into  my  mind  there 
'streamed  once  more  the  strange  and  to  me  so  strangely 
freighted  sunshine  of  Queenshaven.  I  sat  beside  his 
body,  pondering  upon  his  fate,  resolved  to  speak  for 
him  a  word  that  he  himself  had  had  no  power  to  utter. 

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All  things  hurt  him.  He  struck  out 
To  help  him  in  the  unequal  bout; 

Knowing  he  was  doomed  to  lose 
He  hid  with  laughter  cut  and  bruise 
And  jeered  in  desperate  wildness  since 
He  dared  not  let  men  see  him  wince. 

In  his  worst  stridency  he  knew 

That  some  said  “vulgar,”  some  said  “Jew,” 

And  held  in  frantic  leash  a  whole 
World’s  sorrow  in  his  stricken  soul. 

Yet  he  was  patient,  brave  and  kind 
While  stood  the  stronghold  of  his  mind, 

And  coming  from  the  shop  or  street 
Where  he  had  chaffered  in  the  heat, 

He  built  a  world  beyond  the  dim 
Visions  of  them  who  wounded  him. 

Secure  from  them  he  ceased  to  scoff, 

Stripped  the  ignoble  gesture  off, 

Frugal  in  every  common  want 
He  played  Beethoven  and  read  Kant. 

Now  on  his  forehead  blends  with  love 
The  dignity  life  robbed  him  of, 

And  on  his  dead  and  shrunken  face 
Falls  the  grandeur  of  his  race. 

m 

Armistice  day  came  with  its  sharp  though  barren 
relief  at  the  ending  of  the  mere  butchery.  The  Ger¬ 
mans  had  laid  down  their  arms.  Wilson’s  fourteen 
points  were  to  reshape  the  world.  Then  came  the 
Judas  trick  of  Versailles,  the  tricking  not  only  of  Ger¬ 
many  but,  as  is  already  abundantly  clear,  of  all  man¬ 
kind.  “If  you  would  know  what  a  war  was  about,” 
EL  A.  Brailsford  memorably  said,  “study  the  terms  of 

[228] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


peace.’ ’  The  great  capitalistic  groups  who  control  in¬ 
dustrial  populations  had  come  to  blows  over  coal  and 
'oil  and  tropical  estates  and  trade-routes.  The  Western 
group  won  and  proceeded  to  ruin  its  chief  competitor. 
If  millions  of  innocent  people,  including  their  own,  if 
all  the  true  goods  of  civilization,  if  sanity  and  honor 
went  down  to  disaster  in  the  process — what  did  it  mat¬ 
ter  to  them!  They  are  still  busy  reducing  Europe  to 
chaos  and  they  are  still  talking  in  terms  of  guilt  and 
moral  idealism.  If  they  were  honestly  brutal  the  ruin 
might  be  mitigated.  There  is  something  respectable 
and  wholesome  about  a  Fisher  or  a  Tirpitz.  The  lion 
can  be  caged  or  shot  and  still  considered  a  not  ignoble 
brute.  Let  him  begin  to  rip  out  the  bowels  of  men  and 
crunch  the  bones  of  little  children  in  the  name  of  this 
man’s  good  and  that  man’s  moral  castigation,  and  he 
becomes  immeasurably  more  formidable  as  well  as  pro¬ 
foundly  loathsome. 

The  cynical  observer,  were  one  not  too  depressed 
to  be  cynical,  could  enjoy,  as  never  before,  the  spectacle 
of  the  confused  antics  of  mankind.  Auckland  Geddes, 
the  British  ambassador,  blurts  out  a  partial  but  very 
important  truth:  “ Germany  was  being  forced  into  a 
position  with  rising  food  costs — look  at  the  change  in 
the  price  of  wheat  in  the  first  ten  years  of  this  century 
— Germany  was  being  forced  into  a  position  in  which 
she  almost  had  to  fight.”  But  Makino,  the  Japanese 
ambassador,  ignorant,  if  one  will  believe  it,  of  the 
“pacification”  of  Korea  and  the  theft  of  huge  Asian 
territories,  declares:  “Absolute  and  sincere  re¬ 
pentance — published  repentance — without  reserve  and 
without  any  attempt  to  save  Germany’s  face  is  the 
cornerstone  upon  which  must  rest  any  restoration  of 

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confidence.  ’ ’  Repentance  for  what — the  rising  price  of 
food?  Or  the  growth  of  population?  No,  the  sturdy 
democratic  citizen  answers,  for  William  II!  That 
is  the  cynic ’s  triumphant  moment.  For  he  does  indeed 
see  an  element  of  guilt  in  a  great  modern  people’s  per¬ 
mitting  itself  to  be  swayed  by  an  orthodox  Christian, 
an  amateur  moralist,  a  romantic  jingo,  a  mystical  na¬ 
tionalist.  But  the  average  conservative  American— 
pillar  of  a  church,  supporter  of  the  anti-saloon  league, 
member  of  defense  committees  and  fraternal  orders, 
proclaimer  of  America’s  moral  mission — what  right 
has  he  to  protest  against  William  II?  He  is  William 
II.  He  glories  in  the  rule  of  weak-minded  assent  to 
dogma,  rancid  romanticism,  far-flung  navies,  glittering 
armaments.  He  lets  the  Congress  spend  the  greater 
part  of  the  nation’s  income  on  what  is  called  national 
defense  and  means  international  provocation.  The 
religion  of  his  fathers  and  loyalty  to  his  country,  right 
or  wrong,  are  good  enough  for  him.  So,  precisely,  were 
they  for  William  II.  It  is  quite  true  that  stupidity 
rules.  It  rules  the  world. 

iv 

I  was  enabled  to  leave  the  Harley  school  and  take 
up  an  occupation  for  which  I  am  reasonably  well  fitted 
and  which  I  found  more  satisfying  to  the  mind  than 
any  in  which  I  had  yet  engaged.  Quieter  moods  came 
to  me,  though  often  still  for  months  I  saw  in  night¬ 
mare  or  in  sudden,  waking  vision  those  spick  and  span 
classrooms,  those  keen,  metallic  faces  and  heard  the 
cackle  and  clatter  of  those  insufferably  alien  voices. 
I  found,  too,  that  the  long  noise  and  agitation  of  the 

[230] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


war  had  paralysed  the  power  of  seeing,  of  absorption, 
that  it  had  estranged  me  from  beautiful  and  enduring 
things. 

An  autumn  came  which  was  like  a  return  home. 
Once  more  I  saw  shadows  on  the  river  and  bronze 
foliage  and  laid  my  palms  against  the  cool  trunks  of 
trees.  Once  more  with  less  of  inner  fever  to  disturb 
my  sight  I  was  able  to  survey  the  American  scene. 

The  end  of  the  war  left  us,  as  it  left  other  parts  of 
the  world,  in  an  uproar  of  reaction  and  nationalism — 
the  two  delusions  that  repression  destroys  and  that 
uniformity  is  admirable.  The  fact  that  history  flatly 
contradicts  the  first  of  these  assumptions  and  the 
whole  course  of  nature  the  latter  seems  to  trouble  no 
one.  We  have  something  very  like  witch-hunts  upon 
any  one,  especially  in  the  public  service,  who  is  sus¬ 
pected  of  having  seriously  reflected  upon  political  or 
economic  questions;  we  have  a  nation-wide,  organized 
effort  to  break  down  the  slow  gains  of  labor;  we  have 
a  revival  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  outbreaks  of  smoulder¬ 
ing  race  animosities  and  the  apparently  inevitable 
recrudescense  of  Jew  baiting.  The  nation  demands, 
as  the  cant  of  the  day  has  it,  one  hundred  per  cent 
Americanism. 

It  is  time  for  some  one  to  speak  a  little  boldly  and 
a  little  rudely  concerning  these  childish  fallacies. 
Wherever  two  or  three  Americans  of  German  descent 
gather  they  talk  about  their  loyalty  to  the  constitution 
and  humbly  submit  that  they  ask  nothing  but  the  mini¬ 
mum  rights  guaranteed  to  obedient  citizens  of  the 
sovereign  and  omnipotent  state ;  wherever  two  or  three 
Americans  of  Jewish  descent  gather  they  explain  to 
each  other,  for  the  benefit  of  the  public  (including 

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Henry  Ford)  that  only  one — or  is  it  two? — of  the 
chief  commissars  of  the  Federated  Socialist  Soviet  Re¬ 
public  is  Jewish  and  that  so  and  so  many  Jewish  boys 
fought  to  make  the  world  safe  for  one  group  of  pre¬ 
datory  imperialisms  at  the  expense  of  another  group. 
The  Irish  alone,  by  virtue  of  something  proud  and 
fiery  and  reckless  in  their  nature,  seem  reasonably  free 
from  this  foolish  and  futile  form  of  spiritual  subserv¬ 
ience. 

The  good  man  who  is  also  the  good  citizen  is  the 
man  of  self-governed  mind  and  self-originating  vision. 
“I  think  a  man’s  first  duty,”  said  Mark  Twain,  “is  to 
his  honor,  not  to  his  country  and  not  to  his  party.” 
And  by  honor  he  meant  the  honor  of  the  mind.  Estab¬ 
lish  your  convictions  on  as  sound  a  basis  as  you  can ; 
then  cling  to  them.  That  is  the  only  loyalty  that  has 
any  value.  The  mob  that  demands  conformity  of  you 
has  no  claim  on  your  obedience.  “It  is  made  up  of 
sheep;”  to  quote  Mark  Twain  once  more,  “it  is  gov¬ 
erned  by  minorities,  seldom  or  never  by  majorities.  It 
suppresses  its  feelings  and  beliefs  and  follows  the 
handful  that  makes  the  most  noise.”  To  yield  to 
public  clamor  is,  therefore,  not  only  to  betray  yourself 
but  to  give  up  the  duty-— your  single  duty — of  creative 
activity  within  the  social  group  in  which  you  live.  Un¬ 
scrupulous  journalists,  dependent  on  narrow  capital¬ 
istic  interests,  may  whip  up  public  passion  against 
you.  As  for  the  public  itself?  “The  idea  of  what  the 
public  will  think,”  Hazlitt  wrote  with  that  triumphant 
sagacity  of  his,  “prevents  the  public  from  ever  think¬ 
ing  at  all,  and  acts  as  a  spell  on  the  exercise  of  private 
judgment,  so  that  in  short  the  public  ear  is  at  the  mercy 
of  the  first  impudent  pretender  who  chooses  to  fill  it 

[232] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


with  noisy  assertions,  or  false  surmises  or  secret  whis¬ 
pers.  What  is  said  by  one  is  heard  by  all]  the  sup¬ 
position  that  a  thing  is  known  to  all  the  world  makes 
all  the  world  believe  it,  and  the  hollow  repetition  of 
a  vague  report  drowns  the  still,  small  voice  of  reason. ’ 1 
Thus  comes  about  the  intimidation  through  the  mob 
which  has  no  kinship  with  any  service  of  the  people. 
It  must  always  be  remembered  that  “self-government” 
is  not,  alas,  as  John  Stuart  Mill  justly  pointed  out, 
“the  government  of  each  by  himself,  but  of  each  by  all 
the  rest.  The  people  consequently  may  desire  to  op¬ 
press  a  part  of  their  number;  and  precautions  are  as 
much  needed  against  this  as  against  any  other  abuse 
of  power.”  On  the  subject  of  liberty  there  can  be  no 
compromise.  You  compromise  liberty  and  betray  the 
Republic  when  you  practise  unwilling  conformity  or 
offer  a  propitiatory  obedience  to  foreheads  of  brass 
and  lungs  of  leather.  For  liberty,  in  the  great  words 
of  Lord  Acton,  “means  the  assurance  that  every  man 
shall  be  protected  in  doing  what  he  believes  to  be  his 
duty  against  the  influence  of  authority  or  majorities, 
opinion  or  custom.” 

The  practice  of  such  liberty  does  not,  as  you  will 
be  told,  diminish  a  nation’s  power,  only  its  truculence 
and  pugnacity.  Nor  should  it  be  suspended  but  all  the 
more  scrupulously  exercised  in  times  of  war  or  the 
danger  of  war  when  passion  drowns  all  remnants  of 
reflection,  terror  begets  hatred  and  hatred  slavery  and 
destruction.  The  cry  of  defense  is  a  trick.  No  numer¬ 
ous  and  powerful  people,  at  any  rate,  wages  an  un¬ 
avoidable  and  purely  defensive  war.  Nor  is  victory  a 
necessity  or  even  necessarily  a  blessing.  It  is  already 
apparent  that  the  best  and  truest  friends  of  the  French 

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Republic  were  the  “  defeatists  ’ ’  of  1916  and  1917. 
There  is  no  certain  good  but  truth,  no  certain  effective¬ 
ness  but  in  an  abstention  from  all  force,  no  final  con¬ 
solation  save  the  integrity  of  one’s  own  mind. 

y 

The  question  of  the  nature  of  loyalty  and  liberty  is, 
once  closely  thought  upon,  plain  enough.  More  intri¬ 
cate,  at  least  in  appearance,  is  the  problem  of  nativism 
and  the  enforcement  of  cultural  solidarity  on  the  as¬ 
sumption  that  this  country  harbors  hosts  and  guests. 
The  assumption,  being  built  upon  an  absurd  analogy, 
is  baseless.  The  earth  belongs  to  mankind  and  all 
early  history  is  the  history  of  migrations.  No  people 
in  the  world  is  dwelling  in  the  land  of  its  origin. 
The  Greeks  came  from  we  know  not  where  and  oc¬ 
cupied  the  penninsula  and  the  islands  that  are  their 
historic  home;  tribes  from  the  North  West  of  Germany 
sailed  to  Britain  and  made  it  England.  The  discovery 
of  America  caused  a  late  and  perhaps  last  migratory 
movement  in  which,  so  long  as  land  and  air  are  here 
and  over-population  or  war  or  persecution  elsewhere, 
all  mankind  has  the  biological  and  moral  right  to  par¬ 
ticipate.  Priority  of  settlement  gives  no  right  to  the 
exercise  of  exclusion.  Moreover  the  life  of  nations  is, 
humanly  speaking,  of  enormous  duration.  In  the  per¬ 
spective  of  historic  time  the  intervals  that  separate 
the  coming  of  the  early  English  and  Dutch  from  that 
of  the  early  German  or  even  Jewish  settlers  will  shrink 
to  absurdly  inconsiderable  proportions.  Whoever  is 
here,  whoever  comes  here,  has  a  right  to  be  here  and, 

[234] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


since  he  submits  to  laws,  a  right  to  his  share  in  destroy¬ 
ing  or  in  making  them. 

That  a  nation  possessing  a  compact  and  autono¬ 
mous  culture  should  desire  recent  additions  to  its  pop¬ 
ulation  to  merge  into  its  cultural  life  and  enrich  that 
life  is  natural.  But  the  process  must  come  from 
within.  So  soon  as  outer  urgency  is  applied  the  inner 
necessity  and,  therefore,  the  spiritual  justification  of 
the  process  itself  stands  in  grave  doubt.  No  Anglic- 
ization  committees  produced  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  or 
Joseph  Conrad,  no  Germanization  committees  pro¬ 
duced  Adelbert  von  Chamisso  or  Hugo  von  Hofmanns¬ 
thal,  no  movement  for  the  assimilation  of  foreigners 
made  French  poets  of  Francis  Viele-Grifim  or  Stuart 
Merrill.  Beautiful  things  are  beloved  because  they  are 
beautiful,  because  there  is  in  them  an  irresistible  at¬ 
tractiveness,  because  they  are  conformable  to  the  needs 
of  the  soul.  The  very  existence  of  an  Americanization 
movement  shows — when  every  allowance  for  our 
peculiar  conditions  has  been  made — a  discord,  a  pre¬ 
matureness  ;  it  shows  a  crudeness  in  the  fruits  of  our 
civilization  which  not  force  and  clamor  but  only  time 
and  the  sun  can  ripen. 

Americanization  means,  of  course,  assimilation.  But 
that  is  an  empty  concept,  a  mere  cry  of  rage  or 
tyranny,  until  the  question  is  answered  which  would 
never  be  asked  were  the  answer  ripe :  Assimilation  to 
what!  To  what  homogeneous  culture,  to  what  folk¬ 
ways  of  festival  and  song,  to  what  common  instincts 
concerning  love  and  beauty,  to  what  imaginative  pas¬ 
sions,  to  what  roads  of  thought?  We  have  none  such 
that  can  unite  us.  Two  things  are  nation  wide  and  en¬ 
gage  the  passions  of  the  Anglo-American  stock:  base- 

[2351 


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ball  and  the  prohibition  of  wine,  love,  speculation  and 
art.  Is  the  sharing  of  these  two  passions  to  mark  the 
assimilated  American?  I  shall  be  accused  of  a  per¬ 
verse  injustice.  Quite  wrongly.  For  the  notion  of 
liberty  on  which  the  Republic  was  founded,  the  spirit 
of  America  that  animated  Emerson  and  Whitman,  is 
vividly  alive  to-day  only  in  the  unassimilated  for¬ 
eigner,  in  that  pathetic  pilgrim  to  a  forgotten  shrine. 
The  prohibitionists  of  Kansas,  the  lynchers  of  Georgia, 
the  hard-headed  businessmen  in  the  chambers  of  com¬ 
merce  in  a  thousand  cities,  the  members  of  the  National 
Security  League,  The  American  Legion,  The  Loyal 
American  League — what  have  these  self-appointed  in¬ 
quisitors  and  Black  Hundreds  to  do  with  liberty! 
“  Every  man  and  woman  who  will  not  get  in  line  must 
get  out!”  Such  is  the  avowed  program  of  the  Loyal 
American  Legion.  Such  has  been  the  program  of  every 
instigator  of  massacre  or  pogrom  in  history.  These 
people  suspect  liberty,  just  as  they  suspect  civilized 
food  and  drink,  art,  personal  relations,  as  symptoms 
of  an  alien  and  subversive  spirit. 

One  cultural  tradition  we  have  in  America  and  it  is, 
by  at  least  a  few  years,  the  oldest :  the  linguistic  and 
literary  tradition  of  the  English  race.  But  that  tradi¬ 
tion — the  tradition  of  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  and 

Milton - is  a  learned  and  aristocratic  one.  It  has 

never  humanized  the  folk  of  the  British  motherland. 
How  many  Anglo-Americans  share  it?  Ask  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  local  chapter  of  the  American  Legion  when, 
in  the  name  of  American  culture,  they  annoy  a  German 
Singing  Society — ask  them  to  quote  fifty  lines  from 
the  fundamental  classics  of  the  English  tongue !  How 
many  immigrants,  then,  can  share  that  tradition  or 

[236] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


become  assimilated  to  it?  One,  perhaps  one,  in  every 
million.  I  am  that  one  in  a  million.  What  Anglo- 
American  has  lived  with  the  poets  who  are  the  sources 
of  his  great  tradition  more  closely  than  I?  What 
Anglo-American  has  a  deeper  sense  for  the  order  and 
eloquence  and  beauty  of  his  own  tongue  than  I?  But 
when,  in  old  days,  I  desired  to  translate  my  American¬ 
ism  in  that  high  and  fine  sense  into  action,  I  was  told 
that  I  was  not  wanted.  Yet  I  was  to  be  Americanized. 
I  am  even  now  to  be  assimilated.  Suppose  I  intend 
father  to  assimilate  America,  to  mitigate  Puritan  bar¬ 
barism  by  the  influence  of  my  spirit  and  the  example  of 
my  life  ?  Then  a  writer  named,  let  us  say,  Stuart  Sher¬ 
man,  declares  that  I  pervert  the  national  genius.  But 
suppose  I  am  the  national  genius— Dreiser  and 
Mencken  and  Francis  Hackett  and  I — rather  than 
Stuart  Sherman  or  the  late  Hamilton  Wright  Mabie  or 
the  smoothly  assimilated  Edward  Bok?  Ah,  if  we 
could  but  all  meet  in  the  year  two-thousand  before 
some  great  and  spiritual  tribunal.  Until  some  such 
day  comes  the  question  must  remain  an  open  one.  .  .  . 

The  common  folk  cannot  make  my  original  choice 
nor  suffer  my  exclusion.  An  old  and  perhaps  weari¬ 
some  story  is  to  be  told  of  them,  but  a  story  that  must 
be  told  again  and  again  until  a  sense  of  true  liberty  and 
of  human  values  breaks  in  upon  the  darkness  and  the 
degradation  of  our  day. 

I  knew  an  old  J ew  from  the  South  of  Russia.  He 
wore  a  long  beard  and  you  could  see  where  his  ear- 
locks  had  been.  He  had  a  habit  of  hiding  his  hands  in 
his  sleeves.  He  read  the  Torah  and  the  legends  of  his 
people  in  the  sacred  tongue.  He  read  Hamlet  and 
Faust  in  Yiddish  translations.  He  read  not  only  the 

[237] 


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political  news  but  also  the  well-conducted  literary 
columns  in  the  Yiddish  papers  and  cast  a  thoughtful 
vote.  He  sat  in  his  cafe  on  Second  Avenue  and  dis¬ 
cussed  many  notable  matters  and  drank  tea  and,  oc¬ 
casionally,  a  thimble-full  of  brandy  and  smoked  Rus¬ 
sian  cigarettes.  He  was  a  wise  man  and  a  charitable 
one  and  died  poor.  His  son  has  become  Americanized. 
He  knows  neither  Hebrew  nor  Yiddish.  His  English 
is  less  foreign  than  his  father’s  was,  but  far  more 
vulgar  and  corrupt.  On  his  clean-shaven  face  there 
is  an  indescribable  blending  of  impudence  and  cun¬ 
ning,  servility  and  smartness.  He  is  manager  of  the 
Lake  City  Emporium,  makes  big  money  and  thinks 
the  old  man  was  a  little  weak  in  the  head.  He  says, 
having  just  made  another  particularly  unscrupulous 
five-thousand:  “Yes  sir,  I’m  an  American  all  right. 
This  country  is  good  enough  for  me.”  He  likes  to  see 
a  game  of  baseball  and  sometimes  drowses  over  the 
Saturday  Evening  Post.  His  fat,  sleek,  indolent, 
young  wife  blazes  with  diamonds.  . .  . 

I  knew  an  old  German  grocer  from  Mecklenburg. 
He  loved  the  poems  of  Claus  Groth,  the  Low  German 
Burns,  and  quoted  largely  and  with  a  fine,  ripe  appre¬ 
ciation  from  the  books  of  Fritz  Reuter.  He  read  Low 
German  papers.  He  was  a  member  of  a  singing  so¬ 
ciety  and  was  unlearned  neither  in  the  great  folk-songs 
of  his  people  nor  in  the  works  of  Schubert  and  Schu¬ 
mann.  He  quenched  his  moderate  thirst  with  beer. 
His  English  was  broken  to  the  last.  But  in  the  Ameri¬ 
can  community  which  was  his  home  for  forty  years 
his  name  stood  for  careful  honor  and  frugal  wisdom. 
His  son  has  become  Americanized.  He  reads  the  col¬ 
ored  Sunday  supplements  of  the  yellow  press.  He  is 

[238] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


a  baseball  “fan;5’  bis  favorite  songwriter  is  Irving 
Berlin;  be  drinks  whiskey — on  tbe  sly.  He  wants  a 
political  job  in  order  “to  live  on  easy  street.’ ’  Mean¬ 
while  be  clerks  around.  Having  exchanged  bis  father’s 
game  of  skat  for  poker  be  ran  through  bis  inheritance 
in  two  years  in  gambling  rooms.  He  has  Anglicized 
bis  name.  .  .  . 

These  are  unhappily  not  extreme  cases.  They  are 
not  rare.  They  are  increasing  in  frequency  under  the 
pressure  of  tribal  tyranny.  Nor  have  they,  as  I  shall 
be  glibly  and  vaguely  told,  anything  to  do  with  chars 
acter.  For  the  basic  truth  of  the  matter  lies  here :  If 
you  drain  a  man  of  spiritual  and  intellectual  content, 
if  you  cut  him  off  from  the  cultural  continuity  that  is 
native  to  him  and  then  fling  him  into  a  world  where  his 
choice  lies  between  an  impossible  religiosity  and  Pro¬ 
hibition  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  naked  vulgarity  of 
the  streets  and  of  the  baseball  diamond  on  the  other, 
you  have  robbed  him  of  the  foundation  on  which  char¬ 
acter  can  be  built.  The  slow  gains  of  the  ages  are 
obliterated  in  him.  He  uses  the  mechanics  of  civiliza¬ 
tion  to  become  a  sharper  or  a  wastrel. 

Mr.  Granville  Barker,  the  British  playwright,  tells 
a  story  which  he  will  forgive  me  for  borrowing.  He 
was  taking  a  walk  in  spring  on  Staten  Island.  It  was 
Sunday.  Behind  a  hedge  sat  an  Italian  laborer  with  all 
the  grime  of  the  week  on  him,  munching  dark  bread 
and'  garlic  and  reading  with  great  intensity.  Mr. 
Barker  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  book.  It  was  a  cheap, 
well  thumbed  edition  of  the  Divine  Comedy.  “The 
children  of  this  man,”  safdMr.  Barker,  “will  probably 
be  Americanized.  They  will  be  cleaner  and  have  bet¬ 
ter  wages  and  eat  daintier  food  and  perhaps  have 

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electric  light  in  their  houses.  But  will  they  sit  behind 
a  hedge  on  Sunday  reading  an  American  Divine 
Comedy  of  the  future  V* 

The  doctrine  of  assimilation,  if  driven  home  by 
public  pressure  and  official  mandate,  will  create  a  race 
of  unconscious  spiritual  helots.  We  shall  become  ut¬ 
terly  barbarous  and  desolate.  The  friend  of  the  Re¬ 
public,  the  lover  of  those  values  which  alone  make  life 
endurable,  must  bid  the  German  and  the  J ew,  the  Latin 
and  the  Slav  preserve  his  cultural  tradition  and  be¬ 
ware  of  the  encroachments  of  Neo-Puritan  barbarism 
— beware  of  becoming  merely  another  dweller  on  an 
endless  Main  Street;  he  must  plead  with  him  to  re¬ 
main  spiritually  himself  until  he  melts  naturally  and 
gradually  into  a  richer  life,  a  broader  liberty,  a  more 
radiant  artistic  and  intellectual  culture  than  his  own. 

tr 

I  gravely  fear  that  he  will  not  be  permitted  to  heed 
the  warning.  Those  who  have  the  whip  will  not  lay  it 
aside.  For  the  evils  that  are  done  and  suffered  in 
human  society  flow  from  one  source  and  that  source  is 
hardest  to  reach.  Probe  to  the  core  of  any  man’s  con¬ 
sciousness  and  you  will  come  upon  a  blind  and  stony 
kernel  of  moral  certitude.  He  has  taken  his  accidental 
tastes,  beliefs,  instincts,  and  has  transformed  them  into 
an  absolute.  Church,  synagogue  and  mosque  tell  him 
that  this  complex  of  instincts  and  opinions  forged  into 
solidity  by  his  will  to  conquer  is  the  command  of  God. 
The  so-called  liberal  who  rejects  a  revelation  still  har¬ 
bors  the  unbreakable  conviction  that  his  moral  faith  is 
supported  by  a  super-personal  sanction  and  wreaks 

[240] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 

his  set  of  habits  upon  his  fellows  in  the  name  of  some 
concept  to  which  he  assigns  a  false  universality.  Thus 
the  religious  man,  the  righteous  man,  the  patriot,  each 
is  convinced  that  he  knows  what  is  absolutely  right  and 
hence  is  justified  in  enforcing  his  rightness  and  its 
practices  upon  those  whom  he  considers  weak,  wrong¬ 
headed  and  perverse.  From  the  entertaining  of  such 
moral  absolutes  to  the  lynching  stake  and  the  torture 
chamber  the  path,  both  logical  and  practical,  is  straight 
and  unreturning.  The  man  who  believes  that  his  moral 
rightness  is  absolute,  though  he  himself  never  touches 
the  hair  of  another’s  head,  is  a  murderer  and  the  ac¬ 
complice  of  murderers.  For  only  from  moral  certitude 
can  arise  the  exertion  of  force  over  others.  To  avert 
your  face  from  a  neighbor  who  believes  that  society 
needs  a  different  distribution  of  property  or  that  love 
is  a  personal  and  not  a  legal  matter  is  to  lay  hands  of 
violence  upon  his  soul.  To  wage  war  for  an  island  or 
a  coal-field  is  evil  enough.  But  to  wage  it  with  an  as¬ 
surance  of  one’s  moral  rightness  and  the  enemy’s 
moral  wrongness  reduces  men,  as  we  of  this  genera¬ 
tion  have  witnessed,  below  the  fiercest  and  dullest 
beasts.  To  fight  for  the  right  is  the  last  of  human 
follies  and  degradations.  It  is  to  identify  yourself 
with  God  in  order  to  be  cruel  without  the  temptation 
of  a  humane  relenting.  By  the  delusion  of  absolute 
moral  knowledge  and  by  no  other  means  can  the  pa¬ 
tient  and  kindly  children  of  the  earth  be  turned  into 
brutes  with  nerves  of  wire  and  hearts  of  granite.  When 
the  great  revolution  broke  out  in  Russia  I  felt  a  glow 
and  a  brief  hope.  But  that  glow  and  that  hope  are  also 
fading.  For  the  purpose  of  an  economic  revolution  is 
to  release  man  from  physical  suffering  and  uncertainty 

[241] 


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and  the  resultant  slavery  in  order  that  the  individual 
may  be  set  wholly  free ;  it  is  not  to  cage  and  herd  him 
into  another  exclusive  ideology  with  its  dogmas,  laws 
and  prophets.  The  aim  of  ultimate  revolution  must  be 
to  destroy  the  herd  and  the  herd  mind  and  the  herd 
mind’s  hardening  into  that  moral  faith  from  which  are 
born  persecution  and  disease  and  war. 

So  at  the  end  of  this  journey  of  the  mind  I  reach 
the  goal  of  ancient  but  eternal  platitudes.  No  change 
will  avail  in  this  world  except  an  inner  change.  There 
is  no  absolute  but  life,  but  the  persistence  of  the  in¬ 
dividual  and  so  of  the  race.  No  God  has  spoken,  no 
sanction  exists.  There  is  no  inherent  reason  why  men 
should  own  property  privately  or  in  common,  why  they 
should  practice  monogamy  or  some  other  form  of 
sexual  union.  Their  aim  being  happiness  and  their 
happiness  consisting  in  beautiful  and  rational  living, 
it  must  be  their  purpose  to  discover  what  actions  and 
agreements  will  lead  to  such  living.  The  conservative 
replies  that  these  actions  and  agreements  have  been 
discovered.  The  free  man’s  terrible  and  sufficient  an¬ 
swer  must  be  a  picture  of  the  world  at  the  end  of 
twenty  centuries  of  capitalism  and  Christian  morals. 
It  is  a  strange  fallacy  to  regard  unanimity  as  desirable. 
Were  men  unanimous  they  would  be  animals  with  the 
monotonous  instincts  of  animals  and  the  forever 
changeless  and  recurrent  gestures  of  those  instincts. 
Varieties  of  spiritual  temper  and  outer  experience 
make  life  human.  Each  variety  has  relative  truth, 
relative  value,  relative  beauty  for  him  who  is 
impelled  to  live  it.  So  soon  as  he  seeks  to  im¬ 
pose  its  dictates  upon  another,  he  asserts  its  absolute¬ 
ness  and  not  only  commits  a  crime  but  destroys  the 

[242] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 


multiplicity  that  makes  the  cosmos  and  invites  the  fea¬ 
tureless  monotony  that  is  the  negation  of  it.  He  may 
persuade  others  by  being  or  pleading,  never  by  act¬ 
ing.  To  deflect  is  to  wound  and  even  to  touch  is  to  kill. 
And  life,  life  only,  not  one  kind  of  life  rather  than  an¬ 
other,  is  sacred.  This  sacredness  must  be  felt  by  the 
soul.  We  must  learn  to  shrink  from  any  exertion  of 
force  as  we  do  normally  from  murder.  We  must  give 
up  emotionally  the  moral  legends  that  justify  our 
tyrannies.  The  words  of  Shelley  must  be  accepted 
literally.  Man  is  to  be  “  free,  uncircumscribed,  ’ 9  he  is 
to  be 


Exempt  from  awe,  worship,  degree,  the  king 
Over  himself; 

he  is  to  liberate  himself  from  “guilt  and  pain” 

Which  were  for  his  will  made  or  suffered  then. 

Severely  practical  consequences  arise  from  such  a 
conception  of  human  existence.  During  the  fiscal  year 
of  1920  ninety- two  per  cent  of  the  national  expendi¬ 
ture  of  this  country  went  for  the  army,  the  navy  and 
the  results  of  war.  The  present  fiscal  year  promises 
to  repeat  the  story.  Thus  over  four  billions  of  dollars 
will  be  spent  on  the  consequences  and  preparations  of 
destruction.  These  are  figures  to  make  the  imagina¬ 
tion  halt.  But  analyze  them  and  conceive  of  this  vast 
wealth  spent  annually,  even  within  the  present  eco¬ 
nomic  order,  on  unemployment  and  old  age  insurance, 
education  and  the  endowment  of  motherhood.  At  once 
the  picture  of  life  undergoes  a  radical  change.  There 
are  minor  but  still  considerable  sources  of  waste.  Mil- 

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lions  are  spent  on  missionary  work — the  feeble  im¬ 
pudence  of  teaching  other  races  a  set  of  legends  and  a 
bankrupt  system  of  conduct;  other  millions  are  spent 
on  vice  crusades,  on  the  persecution  of  prostitutes  and 
on  the  enforcement  of  unpopular,  repressive  laws.  The 
children  of  New  York  city  have  not  school  houses 
enough  for  the  most  elementary  instruction  and  the 
courts  are  asking  the  inhabitants  of  the  city  to  raise 
twenty-seven  millions  of  dollars  to  defray  the  cost  of 
prosecuting  infringements  of  the  eighteenth  amend¬ 
ment.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  deliberate  human 
folly  has  gone  beyond  that  in  any  age  or  among  any 
people  apparently  civilized.  Let  us  suppose  the  funds 
of  the  missionaries  and  the  vice  crusaders  spent  for  the 
medical  research  of  venereal  diseases.  In  one  genera¬ 
tion  the  physiology  and  psychology  of  human  love 
would  be  revolutionized  and  saved.  This,  together 
with  the  elimination  of  the  savage  notion  -'of  illegiti¬ 
macy,  the  endowment  of  voluntary  motherhood,  the 
universal  introduction  of  efficient  contraceptives, 
would  transform  millions  of  lives  that  are  now  stag¬ 
nant  and  foul  morasses  into  free  rivers  flowing  in  the 
sun.  Why  do  we  waste  the  wealth  produced  by  human 
labor  on  crippling  our  own  instincts  and  hounding  our 
own  souls  ?  Why  do  we,  pitiful  slaves,  toil  to  make  the 
knout  that  flays  our  living  flesh1?  Because  we  let  stupid 
zealots  persuade  us  that  their  sadism  is  a  moral  abso¬ 
lute  compulsive  on  our  minds  and  actions.  And  be¬ 
cause  men  are  starved  in  all  their  vital  impulses  and 
robbed  of  all  delight  and  liberty  they  sigh  for  im¬ 
mortality  as  the  forlornest  of  mortal  hopes,  for  a 
Mohammedan  heaven  of  sensuous  compensation,  which 
is  the  more  honest  one,  or  a  Christian  heaven  in  which 

[244] 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAOS 

all  that  is  human  will  be  extinguished  and  trouble  them 
no  more.  The  philosopher,  driven  by  a  noble  urge, 
seeks  to  make  rational  his  universe  by  assigning  to 
creative  values  a  permanent  validity.  I  share  that 
speculative  hope.  But  I  deplore  its  exploitation  by 
moralistic  professors  who  play  into  the  hands  of  them 
that  stunt  and  defile  the  life  of  man.  ...  I  see  old  men 
with  vague,  wandering  eyes  and  thin,  drawn  lips  and 
claw-like  fumbling  hands.  They  mutter  in  the 
churches;  they  confer  with  priests;  they  make  gifts 
to  buy  their  way  to  heaven  past  old  thefts  and  stealthy 
lecheries.  Morality  has  disinherited  and  poisoned 
them.  They  want  another  chance;  they  want  to  be 
cleansed.  ...  I  have  a  vision  of  an  old  man  of  a  new 
moral  order.  Neither  you  nor  I  will  be  that  man.  But 
the  hope  of  his  coming  may  sustain  us  He,  too,  has 
been  touched  by  fleshly  decay.  But  his  wrinkles  do  not 
humiliate  him;  his  white  hair  does  not  tell  him  that 
it  is  too  late.  His  eyes  are  serene  and  full  of  memories. 
He  has  worked  at  his  chosen  task  without  fear  of 
penury;  he  has  loved  freely  and  magnificently.  .  .  . 
The  voice  of  one — what  a  trick  of  laughing  at  the  dawn 
she  had — floats  to  him  .  .  .  the  sombre  brows  and  hair 
of  another — what  splendor  was  hers  of  mind  and  pas¬ 
sion — arise  before  him.  .  .  .  Yes,  beauty  is  immortal 
and  of  immortal  goodness.  .  .  .  He  thinks  of  evenings 
in  gardens  by  a  river  where  over  wine,  amber  or  the 
color  of  dark  rose-leaves,  he  and  his  friends  debated 
of  art  and  the  state  and  the  procession  of  history  and 
the  nature  of  the  unfathomable  world.  He  thinks  of 
his  strong  children  living  in  the  sun.  He  sits  in  an: 
armchair  by  the  window,  a  volume  of  Plato  or  Goethe 
on  his  knees.  The  sun  is  setting  for  him  now.  But 

[  245  ] 


UP  STREAM 


he  is  beyond  wanting,  needing,  striving.  He  has  had 
his  dawn,  his  noon,  his  afternoon.  The  sun  sinks  and 
darkness  falls  upon  the  open  page.  If  there  is  life 
beyond  earth  he  is  unafraid.  If  there  is  none,  he  is  at 
peace.  Work,  loveliness  and  wisdom  have  been  his. 
The  end  is  as  fit  as  the  beginning;  the  darkness  is  as 
beautiful  as  the  dawn. 


[246] 


EPILOGUE 


All  that  I  have  written  is  true.  It  is  true  of 
America.  It  is  true,  in  other  degrees,  of  mankind.  But 
I  have  written  of  America  for  the  simple  reason  that 
I  am  an  American  and  I  have  spoken  strongly  for  the 
equally  simple  reason  that  the  measure  of  one’s  love 
and  need  is  also  the  measure  of  one’s  disappointment 
and  indignation. 

The  facts  stand  as  I  have  recorded  them.  And  the 
implications  stand.  Among  the  masses  of  our  country¬ 
men  I  see  no  stirring,  no  desire  to  penetrate  beyond 
fixed  names  to  living  things,  no  awakening  from  the 
spectral  delusions  amid  which  they  pursue  their  aim¬ 
less  business  and  their  sapless  pleasures.  But  the 
critical  spirit  which  is  also  the  creative  spirit  has 
arisen  among  us  and  it  has  arisen,  naturally  and  in¬ 
evitably,  in  the  form  of  a  protest  and  a  rebellion 
against  the  life  and  the  ethos  which  is  also  described 
here.  I  need  but  name  a  few  representative  names: 
Masters,  Sherwood  Anderson,.  Sinclair  Lewis.  The 
substance  of  our  new  literature,  of  poems  and  novels 
and  books  of  criticism,  is  clearly  this :  Life  among  us 
is  ugly  and  mean  and,  above  all  things,  false  in  its  as¬ 
sumptions  and  measures.  Somehow  we  must  break 
these  shackles  and  flee  and  emerge  into  some  beyond 
of  sanitv,  of  a  closer  contact  with  reality,  of  nature  and 
of  truth. 

A  few  of  the  books  of  our  new  writers  are  read  by 

r  24 7] 


many  for  the  story,  as  a  matter  of  fashion,  often  quite 
unreflectively.  But  most  of  them  are  read  by  a 
handful  of  people  only.  This  handful  means  little 
among  our  overwhelming  numbers  and  we  who  love 
this  new  literature  and  are  sustained  by  it  are  often 
deceived  in  regard  to  its  significance  as  either  a  symp¬ 
tom  or  a  sanative.  Shall  I  now  say,  in  order  to  end 
agreeably:  It  is  always  darkest  before  dawn?  No; 
for  that  kind  of  professional  optimism  is  precisely 
one  of  our  national  vices.  The  hour  is  dark.  But  that 
shall  not  prevent  us  from  working  and  striving  for  a 
better  one  that  may  come  hereafter. 


THE  END 


/ 


[2481 


